Angles
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 17/01/2019

Angles, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2136 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Angles (people)
#Historical Germanic peoples
#History of Northumberland
#Migration Period
#Peoples of Anglo-Saxon England
Angles

The Angles () 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 Anglia, a peninsula 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, the Anglia Peninsula ("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), in reference to the shape of the peninsula; Indo-European linguist Julius Pokorny derives it from *ang-, "bend" (see ankle).

During the fifth century, all Germanic tribes who invaded Britain 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, so England would mean "land of the fishermen", and English would be "the fishermen's language".

Gregory the Great, in an epistle, simplified the Latinised name "Anglii" to "Angli", the latter form developing into the preferred form of the word. The country remained "Anglia" in Latin. Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius's history of the world uses "Angelcynn" (-kin) to describe England and the Englis...