Angles (tribe)

The Angles (Old English: Engle, Latin: Anglii) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name, which probably derives from the Angeln peninsula, is the root of the names England ("Engla land", "Land of the Angles"), and English, for both its people and its language. According to Tacitus, writing around 100 AD, a people known as Angles (Anglii) lived beyond (apparently northeast of) the Langobards and Semnones, who lived near the River Elbe.