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The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common ancestry, history, and culture. [7] The English identity began with the Anglo-Saxons , when they were known as the Angelcynn , meaning race or tribe of the Angles .
The culture of England is diverse, and defined by the cultural norms of England and the English people. Owing to England's influential position within the United Kingdom it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate English culture from the culture of the United Kingdom as a whole. [ 1 ]
Most native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. [12] The grammar of Old English was much more inflected than modern English, combined with freer word order , and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern German .
The culture of the United Kingdom is influenced by its combined nations' history; its Christian religious life, its interaction with the cultures of Europe, the individual cultures of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the impact of the British Empire. The culture of the United Kingdom may also colloquially be referred to as ...
The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia was first used in 1572 and often thereafter to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international ...
Bede completed his book Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in around 731. Thus, the term for English people (Latin: gens Anglorum; Old English: Angelcynn) was in use by then to distinguish Germanic groups in Britain from those on the continent (Old Saxony in Northern Germany).
According to some scholars, a national identity of the English as the people or ethnic group dominant in England can be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period.. For Lindy Brady and Marc Morris, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the construction of Offa's Dyke exemplifies the establishment of such an identity as early as AD 731, becoming a national identity with the unification ...
Protestantism gave way to imperialism as the leading element of British national identity during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, [119] and as such, a series of royal, imperial and national celebrations were introduced to the British people to assert imperial British culture and give themselves a sense of uniqueness, superiority and national ...