2020/03/16 by John Baker, Jayne Carroll · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1163/9789004421899_008
openalex publication_date 2020/03/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Bede famously traced the origins of the Anglo-Saxons back to three of the strongest Germanic "tribes": They came from three very powerful Germanic tribes [de tribus Germaniae populis fortioribus], the Saxons [Saxonibus], Angles [Anglis], and Jutes [Iutis]. The people of Kent and the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are of Jutish origin and also those opposite the Isle of Wight, that part of the kingdom of Wessex which is still today called the nation of the Jutes. From the Saxon country, that is, the district now known as Old Saxony, came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. Besides this, from the country of the Angles, that is the land between the kingdoms of the Jutes and the Saxons, which is called Angulus, came the East Angles, the Middle Angles, the Mercians, and all the Northumbrian race (that is those people who dwell north of the river Humber) as well as the other Anglian tribes.1 Already in the time of Bede, it is clear that these three people-names could be used to denote both continental and insular peoples. Indeed, in Old English (OE) texts, Engle 'Angle' is used in several ways: (1) to refer to the inhabitants of Angeln;2 (2) to refer to one of the constituent bodies of the Germanic-speaking inhabitants who arrived in lowland Britain, and who settled, traditionally at least (as in Bede's Historia), in midland and northern areas of what was to become England, and in contrast to Saxons and Jutes (and others);3 (3) the 1 Bede, HE i.15. 2 Thus, for example, the narrator of Widsith records that Engle and Swaefe observe the border established by Anglian king Offa; the narrator himself depicts himself mid Englum "among Angles" (George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York, 1936), pp. 154-56, line 61). 3 The Battle of Brunanburh recalls the adventus Saxonum, sian eastan hider Engle ond Seaxe Brytene sohtan 'when hither from the east Angles and Saxons sought Britain' (ll. 69-71); The Battle of Brunanburh, ed. Alistair Campbell (London, 1938).