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Southern France
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Southern France (or the South of France), colloquially known as Le Midi, is a loosely defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Gironde, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and Switzerland south of the Jura. The region includes:
- Aquitaine
- Midi-Pyrénées
- Languedoc-Roussillon
- Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
- Corsica
- Rhone-Alpes
- Auvergne
- Limousin
This area corresponds in large part to Occitania; that to say, the territory in which Occitan (the langue d'oc) – as distinct from the langues d'oïl of northern France – was the historically dominant language.
The name le Midi derives from mi (middle) and di (day) in Old French. The midday was synonymous with the direction of south, because in France (and the rest of the north Hemisphere), the sun moves southward at noon. The synonymy exists in Middle French as well, where meridien means both "midday" and "south."