Dialect and Place-Names

The origin of the Germanic tribes which invaded and settled in England in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. is too complicated and controversial a subject to be discussed here. Traditionally, they consisted of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. But they were called collectively Angelcynn ‘the Angle race’, whilst the country was always Englaland ‘the land of the Angles’ and their language Englisc. Bede himself tells us that Kent was conquered by the Jutes but calls these very invaders Anglorum sive Saxonum gens, whilst Wilfrid, bishop of York, an Angle of noble birth, writes to the Pope as Episcopus Saxoniae and abbot Hweetberht addresses a letter from Wearmouth in Northumbria de Saxonia. What is clear is that they were of Germanic origin and came from the continental sea-board facing eastern and south-eastern Britain. They probably spoke a single language but one with varying characteristics which later developed into different regional dialects.