Kissing friends on the cheek in France is more complicated than you think

Kissing a friend on the cheek when you meet is obviously very French, but did you know that the way you do it says a lot about France's different regions?

This beautiful map, created by cartographer Bill Rankin using web survey data, maps where people in France greet a friend by kissing once, twice, three times, four times and five times.

Rankin uses a pointilist color mix to show some of the nuance in the data.

The north of France is solidly four-kiss territory, while much of the south sticks to two kisses.

The area around Montpellier is an exception, tending toward three kisses. There are a few isolated areas in western France that choose to do only one, while a surprising number of Corsicans say they follow the very time-consuming practice of kissing friends five times.

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