Angles (people)

The Angles (Latin: Anglii) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name England. The name comes from the district of Angeln, an area located on the Baltic shore of what is now Schleswig-Holstein.

The name of the Angles may have been first recorded in Latinised form, as Anglii, in the Germania of Tacitus. It is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited: Angeln in modern German, Angel in Danish. This name has been hypothesised to originate from the Germanic root for "narrow" (compare German and Dutch eng = "narrow"), meaning "the Narrow [Water]", i.e. the Schlei estuary; the root would be angh, "tight". Another theory is that the name meant "hook", as in angling for fish; Indo-European linguist Julius Pokorny derives it from *ang-, "bend" (see ankle).

During the 9th century, all invading Germanic tribes were referred to as Englisc, who were speakers of Old English (which was known as Englisc, Ænglisc or Anglisc). Englisc also goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ-, meaning 'narrow'. In any case, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were originally descended from such, and therefore England would mean 'land of the fishermen', and English would be 'the fishermen's language'.

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