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. The English identity began with the Anglo-Saxons, when they were known as the , meaning "Angle kin" or "English people". Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who settled in Britain around the 5th century AD.
The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who settled in eastern and southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Western Roman Empire, and the Romano-British Brittonic speakers population who already lived there.Martiniano, R., Caffell, A., Holst, M. et al. "Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons". Nat Commun 7, 10326 (2016). Michael E. Weale, Deborah A. Weiss, Rolf F. Jager, Neil Bradman, Mark G. Thomas, Y "Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration", Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2002, pp. 1008–1021, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a004160 Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, they founded what was to become the Kingdom of England by the 10th century, in response to the invasion and extensive settlement of Danes and other Norsemen that began in the late 9th century. This was followed by the Norman Conquest and limited settlement of Normans in England in the late 11th century and a sizeable number of French Protestants who emigrated between the 16th and 18th centuries.Campbell. The Anglo-Saxon State. p. 10Hills, C. (2003) Origins of the English Duckworth, London. , p. 67Higham, Nicholas J., and Martin J. Ryan. The Anglo-Saxon World. Yale University Press, 2013. pp. 7–19 Some definitions of English people include, while others exclude, people descended from later migration into England.
England is the largest and most populated country of the United Kingdom. The majority of people living in England are British citizens. In the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland merged to become the Kingdom of Great Britain. Over the years, English customs and identity have become fairly closely aligned with British customs and identity in general. The demonyms for men and women from England are EnglishmanEnglishman at dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 13 November 2023. and Englishwoman.Englishwoman at dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
English nationality England has had no devolved government of its own since 31 March 1707, as the English (and Scottish) Parliament became a unified Parliament of Great Britain on 1 May 1707 under the Acts of Union 1707.
The 1990s witnessed a rise in English self-awareness. This is linked to the expressions of national self-awareness of the other British nations of Wales, Scotland and, to some extent, Northern Ireland which take their most solid form in the new devolved political arrangements within the United Kingdom and the waning of a shared British national identity with the growing distance between the end of the British Empire and the present.
Many recent immigrants to England have assumed a solely British identity, while others have developed dual or mixed identities."National Identity and Community in England" (2006) Institute of Governance Briefing No. 7. Use of the word "English" to describe Britons from ethnic minorities in England is complicated by most non-white people in England identifying as British rather than English. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office for National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people in England described their nationality as "English", non-white people were more likely to describe themselves as "British"."78 per cent of Bangladeshis said they were British, while only 5 per cent said they were English, Scottish or Welsh", and the largest percentage of non-whites to identify as English were the people who described their ethnicity as "Mixed" (37%).'Identity', National Statistics, 21 February 2006 However, in the 2021 United Kingdom census, 58.4% of respondents identified as "British" instead of "English" to 14.9%.
Other ethnic groups in England are Bangladeshi 1.1%, Chinese 0.7%, Indian 3.1% Pakistani, 2.7%, Asian other, 1.6%, Black, Mixed, White: Gypsy or Irish Traveller 0.1%, Roma 0.2%, White Irish 0.9% and Arab 0.6%.
Relationship to Britishness It is unclear how many British people consider themselves English. The words "English" and "British" are often incorrectly used interchangeably, especially outside the UK. In his study of English identity, Krishan Kumar describes a common slip of the tongue in which people say "English, I mean British". He notes that this slip is normally made only by the English themselves and by foreigners: "Non-English members of the United Kingdom rarely say 'British' when they mean 'English. Kumar suggests that although this blurring is a sign of England's dominant position with the UK, it is also "problematic for the English [...] when it comes to conceiving of their national identity. It tells of the difficulty that most English people have of distinguishing themselves, in a collective way, from the other inhabitants of the British Isles".
In 1965, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote,
When the Oxford History of England was launched a generation ago, "England" was still an all-embracing word. It meant indiscriminately England and Wales; Great Britain; the United Kingdom; and even the British Empire. Foreigners used it as the name of a Great Power and indeed continue to do so. Bonar Law, by origin a Scotch Canadian, was not ashamed to describe himself as "Prime Minister of England" [...] Now terms have become more rigorous. The use of "England" except for a geographic area brings protests, especially from the Scotch.Taylor, A. J. P. (1965, English History, 1914–1945 Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. v
However, although Taylor believed this blurring effect was dying out, in his book The Isles: A History (1999), Norman Davies lists numerous examples in history books of "British" still being used to mean "English" and vice versa.
In December 2010, Matthew Parris in The Spectator, analysing the use of "English" over "British", argued that English identity, rather than growing, had existed all along but has recently been unmasked from behind a veneer of Britishness.
Historical and genetic origins
Replacement of Neolithic farmers by Bell Beaker populations English people, like most Europeans, largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, descended from a Cro-Magnon population that arrived in Europe about 45,000 years ago; Neolithic farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe pastoralists who expanded into Europe from the Pontic–Caspian steppe in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago.
Recent genetic studies have suggested that Britain's Neolithic population was largely replaced by a population from North Continental Europe characterised by the Bell Beaker culture around 2400 BC, associated with the Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. This population lacked genetic affinity to some other Bell Beaker populations, such as the Iberian Bell Beakers, but appeared to be an offshoot of the Corded Ware single grave people, as developed in Western Europe. It is currently unknown whether these Beaker peoples went on to develop Celtic languages in the British Isles, or whether later Celtic migrations introduced Celtic languages to Britain.
The close genetic affinity of these Beaker people to Continental North Europeans means that British and Irish populations cluster genetically very closely with other Northwest European populations, regardless of how much Anglo-Saxon and Viking ancestry was introduced during the 1st millennium AD.
Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans
The influence of later invasions and migrations on the English population has been debated, as studies that sampled only modern DNA have produced uncertain results and have thus been subject to a large variety of interpretations. More recently, however, ancient DNA has been used to provide a clearer picture of the genetic effects of these movements of people.
One 2016 study, using Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon era DNA found at grave sites in Cambridgeshire, calculated that ten modern day eastern English samples had 38% Anglo-Saxon ancestry on average, while ten Welsh and Scottish samples each had 30% Anglo-Saxon ancestry, with a large statistical spread in all cases. However, the authors noted that the similarity observed between the various sample groups was likely to be due to more recent internal migration.Schiffels, S. et al. (2016) Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history , Nature Communications 7, Article number:10408
Another 2016 study conducted using evidence from burials found in northern England, found that a significant genetic difference was present in bodies from the Iron Age and the Roman period on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon period on the other. Samples from modern-day Wales were found to be similar to those from the Iron Age and Roman burials, while samples from much of modern England, East Anglia in particular, were closer to the Anglo-Saxon-era burial. This was found to demonstrate a "profound impact" from the Anglo-Saxon migrations on the modern English gene pool, though no specific percentages were given in the study.
A third study combined the ancient data from both of the preceding studies and compared it to a large number of modern samples from across Britain and Ireland. This study found that modern southern, central and eastern English populations were of "a predominantly Anglo-Saxon-like ancestry" while those from northern and southwestern England had a greater degree of indigenous origin.Ross P. Byrne, Rui Martiniano, Lara M. Cassidy, Matthew Carrigan, Garrett Hellenthal, Orla Hardiman, Daniel G. Bradley, Russell McLaughlin: "Insular Celtic population structure and genomic footprints of migration" (2018)
A major 2020 study, which used DNA from Viking-era burials in various regions across Europe, found that modern English samples showed nearly equal contributions from a native British "North Atlantic" population and a Danish-like population. While much of this latter genetic imprint has been attributed to earlier Anglo-Saxon settlement, it has been calculated that the modern English population has approximately 6% Danish Viking ancestry, with a further 4% contribution from a Norse-type source representative of the Norwegian Vikings. The study also found an average 9-18% admixture from a source further south in Europe, plausibly associated with the Normans and the resulting increase in population movements during that era.Margaryan, A., Lawson, D.J., Sikora, M. et al. "Population genomics of the Viking world". Nature 585, 390–396 (2020) See Supplementary Note 11 in particular
A landmark 2022 study titled "The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool", found the English to be of plurality Anglo-Saxon-like ancestry, with heavy native Celtic Briton, and also suggested medieval admixture from the Frankish areas of Europe. Significant regional variation was also observed.
History of English people
Anglo-Saxon settlement
The first people to be called "English" were the Anglo-Saxons, a group of closely related Germanic tribes that began migrating to eastern and southern Britain, from southern Denmark and northern Germany, in the 5th century AD, after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain. The Anglo-Saxons gave their name to England ("Engla land", meaning "Land of the Angles") and to the English.