England

The Jutes came from Jutland, the Saxons from Holstein, and the Angles from Schleswig. Doubtless the Angles took their name from that angle or corner of land which juts out slightly into the Southern Baltic between the modern towns of Schleswig and Flensburg. In both Latin and Common Germanic their name was Angli, and this form became Engle in Old English by change of stressed vowel or 'front mutation' in much the same way as man has the plural men or, with a difference of designation, Frankish is used side by side with French. Before 1000 A.D. Angelcynn, 'Angle-race', and after that date Englaland, 'land of the Angles', were used to denote collectively the Germanic peoples in Britain: Angles, Saxons, and Jutes alike. No one spoke Saxon or Sexisc, not even King Alfred himself, the great and good King of the West Saxons. From the beginning the language was always Englisc.

Simeon POTTER, Our Language, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1985.