England

How did England get its name ?

Here we must confront questions of nomenclature.

By common consent the native English, from the Iron Age forwards, have been called "Britons'. But the term is really only pertinent to the Atlantic English of the western coasts; these are the Britons who migrated to Gaul and established the province of Brittany.

They are the people who spoke Celtic and Gaelic. The Britons were also strong in the north, as a permanent reminder of old tribal group-ings. In the centre, south and east of the country were native English, too, but they inhabited the regions where Saxon settlers came to dominate, sometimes by peaceful and sometimes by violent means. It was from one band of these settlers, the Angles, that the name of England itself first emerged. Engla land' was the Viking description. It is characteristic of a country that, from the first century to the thirteenth century, was subject to almost continual foreign occupation.

The 'empire race' was once a colonized and exploited people.

Source ~ Peter Ackroyd