The Frank Enigma???

Hello everyone...

I come from the United States and I am just starting to learn French...in my quest to know more about the language, I have been watching a lot of documentaries on France, the French language, and the French people.

I was watching a show on the History International Channel called "Barbarian Battle Tech" that aired on June 23rd at 13:00 ET/PT and they said something that interested me, and I was curious if anyone here has ever heard of this, or can tell me more about it?

They were talking about the Franks and how they were easily able to conquer modern day France with their special war axe called the "francisca." Then they said that France may have been named after this weapon?

From what I have been able to piece together from the information on the internet, France comes from the word "Francia" which means "land of the Franks" in Latin. But there seems to be a question of where the word "Frank" comes from? There are many theories for the origin of this word, but no one seems to be able to prove it?

Are their French people here and if so, what do you think? Are there any people here who have asked this question also? Maybe someone here can help me understand more about where the word Frank came from?

- The Franks = "the Free Ones" and/or "The Tough Ones" (both ideas being cross-linked)
- The war axe was named after them, not the other way round.
- They show up late in history because they weren't a Germanic tribe among others but a confederation of several tribes. With their ability to aggregate other peoples around them they were able to defeat one after another the other tribes and eventually what was left of the Roman empire. They ultimately rose to dominant force in continental Western Europe.
- The western part ("Francia Occidentalis") of the Frankish dominion became France, while the eastern, purely Teutonic ("deutsch") part retained its old latin name 'Germania', in German 'Deutschland'.