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The Belgae were a group of nations or tribes living in north-eastern Gaul, on the west bank of the Rhine, in the 1st century BC, and later also attested in Britain. Under Augustus, the district known as Sequania or Seine formed part of Belgica. Their name survives in modern Belgium. Caesar is the first Roman writer to give us any historical data concerning the peoples who inhabited the basin of the Rhine. He conquered the tribes on the left bank, and was followed a generation or so later by Augustus, who established numerous fortified posts on the river, but the Romans never succeeded in obtaining a firm occupancy of the right bank. The Gaulish counterparts of the Atrebates of Belgica Province provided frequent subject matter for Caesar's Gallic Wars to the late Western Roman Empire. From The Fens northward along the modern coast, the drainage flowed into the northern North Sea basin, which, in turn, drained towards the Viking Deep. As the land-ice melted, the rising sea level drowned the lower lands, ultimately establishing the World's modern coasts.

Dinan is a walled Breton town and a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor département, in the north of Brittany and is part of the current administrative région of Bretagne and is surrounded by the départements of Finistère, Morbihan, and Ille-et-Vilaine, with the English Channel on the north. The Romans took the town of Arles on the Rhône river which forks into two branches just upstream of Arlesin 123 BC and expanded it into an important city, with a canal link to the Mediterranean Sea being constructed in 104 BC.
In 395 Burgundy became the seate of the Praetorian Prefecture of the Gaul, governing an area that included Gaul proper plus Hispania (Spain) and Armorica (Brittany). The County of Flanders became part of France during the Middle Ages, but the remainder of the Low Countries were part of the Holy Roman Empire.

After the yeare 400 AD, the Romans retreated and the German and Celtic tribes settled down in these regions. After 400 A.D., the Romans left the British Isles, and Scotland began to emerge from the dark ages. There were four peoples inhabiting what was then called Alban: the Picts, the Scots, the Britons, and the Angles, when invasions by Norwegian Vikings began. Many of these Norman names were actually referring to place names in Northern France or in Wales (Walsh) that the invaders came from. For example Cusack (Cussac) Lyons (Lyons) De Lacey (Lacey) Joyce (Jose) and French. Other names refer to original occupations: Falconer, Smith, Cooke, Taylor, Mason, Archer and Harper. Further complications arose when the old Gaelic names were transposed into English, thus Carey, derived from the Gaelic O`Ciardha, became Carew or even Carr.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the southern Netherlands came under the authority of the Franks. The oldest cities in the lowlands were Dordrecht, Delft, Leiden, Haarlem in Holland, Middelburg, Veere and others in Zeeland, Ghent, Brugge and Brussels in Flanders, Maastricht in Limburg and Keulen, Aken and others in Germany. Most details of the Counts (775-916AD) were gathered by the monks of the Abbey of Egmond (West-Frisia). In 922 Charles the Simple gave in full possession to a Count in Frisia, Dirk (a shortened form of Diederic, Latin Theodoricus), the church of Egmont with all that belonged to it from Swithardeshage to Kinhem. This man, usually known as Dirk I, died about 939 and was succeeded by his son of the same name.
Hereditary surnames came into use in Ireland among leading families as early as AD 1000, and within several centuries all classes used them. The passing of surnames father to son frequently led to the assumption of common, if distant, ancestry among families with the same name. The surname itself often reinforced the notion, especially when it included the "O" prefix, signifying "descended from", or "Mac", meaning "son of". Further reinforcing the presumption of relationship was family identification with a sept- a group of like surnamed families concentrated in a locality under the rule of a king, chief, or lord of the same name before the introduction of British governance [after 1500].-Irish Families, Their Names, Arms, and Origins-Edward MacLysaght. As time moved on people stopped changing surnames from generation to generation. The first people to do this were often the nobility and royalty of an area. These permanent surnames seem to appear first after the first crusades. They started in France at about 1000 and spread with the Norman Invasion to England and Scotland.
In 1336, Philip made plans for an expedition to restore David to the Scottish throne, and to also seize Gascony. As French ships began ravaging coastal settlements on the English Channel and in 1337 Philip reclaimed the Gascon fief, citing feudal law and saying that Edward had broken his oath and in the early years of the war, allied with the nobles of the Low Countries and the burghers of Flanders. In 1341, conflict over the succession to the Duchy of Brittany began the Breton War of Succession, in which Edward backed John of Montfort and Philip backed Charles of Blois. When the war began, France had a population of fourteen million, whereas England had a population of only two million. Edward proceeded north unopposed and besieged the coastal city of Calais on the English Channel, capturing it in 1347. The river Rance of northwestern France flows into the English Channel between Dinard and Saint-Malo.