Angles

The Angles is a modern English word for a Germanic-speaking people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The Angles were one of the main groups that settled in Britain in the post-Roman period, founding several of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name "England". The ethnic name "Angle" has had various forms and spellings, the earli... more

The Angles is a modern English word for a Germanic-speaking people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The Angles were one of the main groups that settled in Britain in the post-Roman period, founding several of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name "England". The ethnic name "Angle" has had various forms and spellings, the earliest attested being the Latinized name Anglii, a Germanic tribe mentioned in the Germania of Tacitus. The original noun from which this adjective was produced has not been determined with confidence. The stem is theorized to have had the form *Ang?l/r-. The more prominent etymological theories concerning the name's origin have included: Pope Gregory the Great is the first known to have simplified Anglii to Angli, which he did in an epistle, the latter form developing into the preferred form of the word in Britain and throughout the continent ... less