Notre-Dame : le coq de la fleche de la cathedrale retrouve

[ucrdem]

3. It's partly a Latin pun.

The Latin word for roster is gallus and the Roman word for France was Gall, as in Caesar's Gallic Wars. Caesar incidentally wrote in his first sentence that the Galls called themselves Celts, and "gallois" in current French means Welsh. So for one reason or another the Gallic coq became the national symbol of France, like the bald eagle is of the US. And then there's that other meaning of cock. But as the article mentions, Napoleon III thought chickens were undignified and weak, and after the revolution a new national symbol, Marianne, was put forward. That's the symbol currently used in official French government communications: