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The Britons (*Pritanī, Latin: Britanni, Welsh: Brythoniaid), also known as Celtic Britons [1] or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people [2] who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons (among others). [2]
He named pagan peoples still living in Germany (Germania) in the eighth century "from whom the Angles or Saxons, who now inhabit Britain, are known to have derived their origin; for which reason they are still corruptly called Garmans by the neighbouring nation of the Britons": the Frisians, the Rugini (possibly from Rügen), the Danes, the ...
Britons invited the Saxons to the island to repel them but after they vanquished the Scots and Picts, the Saxons turned against the Britons. Kingdoms and tribes in Britain, c. AD 600 The epic poem Beowulf, set in 6th century Scandinavia, composed c. 700–1000 AD. Seven kingdoms are traditionally identified as being established by these migrants.
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, [22] are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. [ 23 ] [ 24 ] [ 25 ] British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals.
These Britons gave the region its current name and contributed the Breton language, Brezhoneg, a sister language to Welsh and Cornish. (Brittany used to be known in English as Little Britain to distinguish it from Great Britain.)
In general, classical writers referred to the Britons as Pretannoi (in Greek) or Britanni (in Latin). [137] Strabo, writing in Roman times, distinguished between the Celts and Britons. [138] However, Roman historian Tacitus says the Britons resembled the Celts of Gaul in customs and religion. [11]
The use of Britons for the inhabitants of Great Britain is derived from the Old French bretun, the term for the people and language of Brittany, itself derived from Latin and Greek, e.g. the Βρίττωνες of Procopius. [28] It was introduced into Middle English as brutons in the late 13th century. [40]
Gildas himself did not mention the defeated Saxons as an ongoing problem, but instead he noted that the Britons had become divided into many small "tyrannies". His interest was in criticizing the Romano-British ruling class, whereas archaeological evidence shows that Anglo-Saxon culture had long become dominant over much of Britain.