The English ethnic group traces its origins to 5th-century Germanic migrants who integrated with native Britons. Modern genetic studies confirm English people, first documented by Bede in 731 AD, are today 25-47% Anglo-Saxon.
England is named after the English ethnic group, not the other way around. An Englishman may move abroad and remain an Englishman, and a foreigner who moves to England does not thereby become English. English culture is defined by whatever ethnically English people do. English ethnicity is determined by heritage. If you descend from the medieval English people and were enculturated among their descendants in England, then you are ethnically and culturally English.
England was first united under one crown in 927 AD, which is 1,098 years ago. So England as a nation-state is over 1,000 years old, but England – that is, the land of the English – is much older.
The English were first defined as a native ethnic group in Britain by Bede in c. 731 AD. However, their ancestors, the Angles on the continent, are first described by the Roman historian Tacitus, who called them the 'Anglii' in 98 AD (and we cannot imagine that they did not exist before the Romans learned about them).
Not only do we have these written sources, making us one of the most historically well-attested, extant ethnic groups on Earth today, but we also have scientific evidence confirming the recordings of our origins first presented by the Venerable Bede and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
A combination of new genetic evidence, old archaeological evidence and a novel approach to the analysis of skull morphology (craniometry) have revealed what really happened in this obscure period of history, traditionally called the Dark Ages, to which we trace our ethnogenesis.
In the fifth century AD, large numbers of Germanic peoples from the continent migrated, in a seemingly coordinated way, to Britain. The initial impact on the Eastern part of the country has been estimated to indicate a population displacement of up to 75% according to a study of skulls (Plomp KA, et al, 2021) or a displacement of up to 80% according to genetic evidence (Gretzinger J, et al, 2022). There followed a period of integration as the English moved further West, causing formerly Brythonnic speaking natives either to adopt the Germanic language and culture of the English, or to flee to the Western fringes of the island where they became the Cornish and Welsh peoples. This integration with the natives resulted in a modern English population that was estimated to be 40% of Germanic origin and 60% Brythonic in a 2016 study (Schiffels S, et al, 2016). A larger and more conclusive study of ancient English DNA from 2022 estimates that modern English people range from 25-47% Anglo-Saxon (CNE), 11-57% Iron-age Briton (WBI), and 14-43% French. The ethnic English must therefore be modelled with three Iron-Age source populations, not just two, due to continuous immigration from France during the Middle Ages (Gretzinger J, et al, 2022). The variations in ancestral proportions reflect regional diversity within the English ethnic group, with Brythonic ancestry remaining higher in the West and Germanic ancestry being higher in Eastern and Central regions.
However, it must be understood that while the English are about 40% like the fifth century Germanic migrants (averaged across all regions, ignoring modern population density), they have a far greater genetic affinity to the English of the Middle and Late Anglo-Saxon periods, who had already assimilated the native Britons. The modern English genetic group existed in the Middle Anglo-Saxon era and by the time the term “Anglo-Saxon” was in use, the people who it referred to were almost entirely the same as modern ethnically English people.
The archaeological record includes one man of entirely native “Celtic” British ancestry (grave 37, Updown Eastry, Gretzinger et al 2022) interred along with weapons in a high-status pagan Germanic barrow – showing that the natives not only became English but were able to achieve high status within the Germanic English culture.
Another ancient pagan grave, including a cow sacrifice, was found at Oakington near Cambridge (grave 80, Gretzinger et al 2022) among a total of 124 inhumations. It contained a woman whose genetic ancestry has been determined to be around 60% native British and 40% Germanic invader – and this mix is much the same as that of the average Englishman today, even though the term 'English' did not yet exist when she was buried (Gretzinger et al 2022).
The terms 'English' and 'Anglo-Saxon' were synonyms. While 'English' was first recorded as an ethnonym by Bede around 731 AD, the term 'Anglo-Saxon' came a bit later when King Alfred the Great, formerly just King of the West Saxons, captured the Mercian-Anglian territory of London in 886 AD, and was thenceforth known as 'Rex AngulSaxonum'. Both terms continued to be used for the next two centuries. A 10th-century charter of King Eadwig describes him as “King of the Anglosu” – an abbreviation of 'Anglo-Saxonum' – and King Cnut sometimes used the title "King of the Anglo-Saxons" as recently as the 11th century.
After the Normans invaded in the 11th century, they referred to the natives as 'Engleis' and in so doing recognised their distinct ethnic identity. The Normans brought an end to the so-called Anglo-Saxon era, but not to Englishness. Neighbours on the continent referred to the English then, and still do, with names derived from Angle such as “Anglais” while Celtic speaking British neighbours refer to the English as “Sassenach” - a word derived from Saxon.
Nor were Anglo-Saxon origins of the English forgotten at home. Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, published around 1129, relied on Anglo-Saxon texts to tell a history of England. Henry there coined the expression Anglia plena jocis, “England full of jokes”, a phrase which may be the origin of the “Merry old England" trope - a nostalgia for an England which has been lost, widely regarded as a central component of English culture, at least since the Industrial Revolution.
In 1215, a history of Britain was written called Layamon's Brut - which, while including a number of Norman words, deliberately employs archaic Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.
Around 1400, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales invoked pre-Norman English figures such as the Germanic water god Wade. An anonymously authored poem from the late 14th century titled ‘Athelston’ is set in Anglo-Saxon England and seems to be about Alfred’s grandson, King Aethelstan of the Anglo-Saxons.
The word 'Anglo-Saxon' reappears along with a renewed interest in the early English past in the mid-16th century – motivated by an awakening Protestant national consciousness seeking to define itself in opposition to the Catholic South which did not share their Germanic ancestry. Consequently, Englishness and its Anglo-Saxon origins, became associated with an imagined liberty of pre-Norman governance.
In the 17th century, Gerrard Winstanley, one of the leaders of the radical dissidents known as The Diggers, wrote:
“O what mighty Delusion, do you, who are the powers of England live in! That while you pretend to throw down that Norman yoke, and Babylonish power, and have promised to make the groaning people of England a Free People; yet you still lift up that Norman yoke, and slavish Tyranny, and holds the People as much in bondage, as the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War.”
(Winstanley, Gerrard, The True Levellers Standard Advanced: Or, the State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men (London: [n.pub.], 1649)
For the last 500 years, this English identity has repeatedly relied on an Anglo-Saxon origin to define itself. But since the two world wars, the word “Germanic” has had negative connotations associated with a national enemy and so some, such as Francis Pryor, have attempted to manufacture an imagined “Celtic” origin for the English instead (In his BBC series Britain AD (2004) and Britain BC (2003), and his books, Pryor proposes a continuity model: major cultural transformations in Britain (like the transition to Anglo-Saxon England) occurred through gradual internal development and cultural exchange).
Certainly, the genetic evidence demonstrates that the English are not entirely descended from Germanic migrants. But the Iron-Age Britons themselves were not entirely descended from Celtic migrants either. The genetic history of the British Isles over the last 4400 years is characterised by long periods of stability interspersed with mixing events with closely related peoples.
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| This infographic illustrates the last 12,000 years of Britain’s genetic heritage. |
The blue in the above diagram represents the Western Hunter-Gatherers like Cheddar man, from whom we still descend in part, but who were largely displaced by the first farmers 6000 years ago, represented by the green. It was this second group who built the megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge. Then, around 4400 years ago, the Bell Beaker folk arrived from the Netherlands and hastened the Bronze Age. This was the largest population displacement in the history of Britain, with some 90% of the Neolithic people being displaced in just a few generations (Olade I, et al 2018). The Beaker folk introduced Western Steppe Herder ancestry from Ukraine/South Russia, represented on the graphic by orange, and which is associated with the Indo-European language family to which both Brythonic (Celtic) and English (Germanic) belong. This was the last genetic component of the three prehistoric peoples who constitute the populations ancestral to the English. However, the Beaker folk were also already mixed with the same farmers and hunters that were previously present in Britain, which is why the orange on the graphic does not show the full 90% displacement.
Migrations of Celts in the Late Bronze Age (Patterson N, et al 2022), Anglo-Saxons in the Dark Ages and French people in the Middle Ages (Gretzinger J, et al, 2022) did not introduce any new prehistoric ancestry to the island. They merely altered the proportions of the three pre-existing ancestral components, as the graphic demonstrates. The nearly four centuries of Roman occupation, surprisingly, left no genetic legacy in the native gene pool (Martiniano R, et al 2016). Therefore the alleged diversity of Roman Britain has no relevance to the identity of English people today. It is also important to note that the Anglo-Saxons were already closely related to the Iron Age-Britons before they mixed together, both being indigenous North-West European peoples descended from the Bell Beaker folk, Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers.
While the roots of the English nation, ethnicity and language are tied to the Germanic invaders of the fifth century, the English ethnic group have much deeper ancestral ties to Great Britain. Via the Britons who mixed with the Saxons, the English people descend from the Bronze Age Beaker folk, the first Neolithic farmers and even the hunter gatherers who collected shellfish on these shores over 10,000 years ago when Britain was not yet an island. The English share in the deep Celtic ancestry of their Welsh and Scottish neighbours, but are also distinguished by a unique connection to Germanic Europe.
This article was originally written for The Restorationist in June 2025
