The Normans were the people who gave their names to Normany, a region in northern France. They were the descendants of the original Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock. Their identity first emerged in the first half of the tenth century and gradually evolved over the succeeding centuries until they disappeared as an ethnic group in the early thirteenth century. The name "Normans" is derived from "Northmen" or "Norsemen", after the Vikings from Scandinavia who founded Normandy (Northmannia in its original Latin).