The Carolingians, like the Merovingians before them, regarded dividing the kingdom as normal, and had done so in 741 and 768; the same would have happened in 814 if Louis’s brothers had not died. In 843, Lothar (840–55), as the eldest brother and already co-emperor, took the central lands around Aachen and a narrow strip of land connecting it to his political power-base in Italy; Louis (840–76) took East Francia, roughly the lands east of the Rhine; Charles (840–77) took West Francia, roughly the western two thirds of what is now France. Each of these three were divided later between sons as well. That was too many divisions, and the Carolingians were always worried about there being too many heirs; they excluded female-line heirs and illegitimate sons from the succession, and gave the latter non-royal-sounding names like Hugh and Arnulf to mark the fact.