By the eighth century, most of the Franks had exchanged their Germanic Franconian languages for the Latin-derived Romances of Gaul. However, the Franks that stayed in the Low Countries had kept their original language, i.e., Old Dutch, also known as "Old Low Franconian" among linguists. At the time the language was spoken, it was known as *"þiudisk", meaning "of the people"—as opposed to the Latin language "of the clergy"—which is the source of the English word "Dutch". Now an international exception, it used to have in the Dutch language itself a cognate with the same meaning, i.e., "Diets(c)" or "Duuts(c)".