common in English. The duchies are often called "younger" (newer, more recent, etc.) in order to distinguish them from the older duchies which were vassal-states of the Merovingian monarchs. Historian Herwig Wolfram denied any real distinction between older and younger stem duchies, or between the stem duchies of Germany and similar territorial principalities in other parts of the Carolingian empire:

I am attempting to refute the whole hallowed doctrine of the difference between the beginnings of the West-Frankish, "French", principautés territoriales, and the East-Frankish, "German", stem-duchies. . . Certainly, their names had already appeared during the Migrations. Yet, their political institutional, and biological structures had more often than not thoroughly changed. I have, moreover, refuted the basic difference between the so-called älteres Stammesfürstentum [older tribal principalities] and jüngeres Stammesfürstentum [newer tribal principalities], since I consider the duchies before and after Charlemagne to have been basically the same Frankish institution. . .