Pas-de-Calais

The Pas-de-Calais (French: [pɑ d(ə) kalɛ] , 'strait of Calais'; Picard: Pas-Calés; Dutch: Nauw van Calais) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments of France, with 887, and is the 8th most populous. It had a population of 1,465,278 in 2019. The Calais Passage connects to the Port of Calais on the English Channel. The Pas-de-Calais borders the departments of Nord and Somme and is connected to the English county of Kent via the Channel Tunnel.

History

Inhabited since prehistoric times, the Pas-de-Calais region was populated in turn by the Celtic Belgae, the Romans, the Germanic Franks and the Alemanni. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman practice of co-opting Germanic tribes to provide military and defence services along the route from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Cologne created a Germanic-Romance linguistic border in the region that persisted until the eighth century.

Saxon colonization into the region from the fifth to the eighth centuries likely extended the linguistic border somewhat south and west so that by the ninth century most inhabitants north of the line between Béthune and Berck spoke a dialect of Middle Dutch, while the inhabitants to the south spoke Picard, a variety of Romance dialects.

This linguistic border is still evident today in the toponyms and patronyms of the region. Beginning in the ninth century, the linguistic border began a steady move to north and the east.