The Angles gave us English — but it could have been Saxon

Gorgocutie says:

The Angles were a Germanic tribe from the Anglia peninsula who, along with the Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, crossed the North Sea to settle in Britain after the Roman withdrawal. They gave their name to the land (“Englaland” — land of the Angles) and to the language we now call English.

But the Saxons were just as numerous and arguably became the dominant political force in Anglo-Saxon England, with kingdoms like Wessex, Sussex, and Essex all bearing their name. King Alfred the Great was King of the West Saxons. So why didn’t we end up speaking “Saxon” instead of “English”?

Blame — or thank — the scribes. Early Latin chroniclers like Bede (writing around 731 AD) referred to the Germanic-speaking peoples of Britain collectively as the “Angli” (Angles). When Old English was being written down, the language was called “Englisc” — the speech of the Angles. By the time the Saxons had consolidated political power, the linguistic name was already baked into the literature.

So the English language got its name from the Angles, while the Saxons got… a musical instrument pun that still lands 1,500 years later.

📜 The moral of the story: History is written by the victors, but language is named by the chroniclers.

#linguistics #history #etymology #anglosaxon #englishlanguage #pun