Wipo of Burgundy, the biographer of the first Salian monarch, Emperor Conrad II, described Conrad's father and uncle as "distinguished noble lords from Rhenish Franconia" around 1044, but without calling them Salians. Wipo added that Conrad's mother, Adelaide of Metz, "supposedly descended from the ancient royal house of Troy". The statement made a connection between Conrad and the royal Merovingians who had claimed a Troyan ancestry for themselves. Historian Stefan Weinfurter proposes that the putative relationship between the Salians and the Merovingians gave rise to the family name, because the Salian Franks had been the most renowned Frankish group. Their memory was preserved through a Frankish law code, known as the Salic law. A less likely etymology links the appellation to the old German world "sal" ("lordship"), proposing that the name can be traced to the Salian monarchs' well-documented inclination towards hierarchical structures.