Anglo-Saxon (English)
The Anglo-Saxons were a people who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. They included people from Germanic tribes (Angles / Saxons etc.) who migrated to the island from continental Europe, and their descendants; as well as indigenous British groups who adopted some aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language. The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of British history between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement, and up until the Norman(Frank) conquest.
The term Anglo-Saxon is also popularly used for the language, in scholarly use more usually called Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century.
Use of the term Anglo-Saxon assumes that the words Angles, Saxons or Anglo-Saxon have the same meaning in all the sources. Assigning ethnic labels such as "Anglo-Saxon" is fraught with difficulties, and the term itself only began to be used in the 8th century to distinguish "Germanic" groups in Britain from those on the continent.
