The ethnonym Angles was the designation of an ancient
Germanic tribe that originally lived on the northeastern coast of Germany and
in the central part of the Jutland peninsula (the territory of modern Denmark)
and took part in the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain in the V–VI centuries. The
name England was formed from the
ethnonym Angles.
The center of the ancestral homeland of the Angles is considered to be the area on the small semi-island of Angeln (part of the Jutland peninsula). The area of Angeln is located in the north-east of the current German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The origin of the ethnonym Angles is associated with the word
meaning "corner", which acted as a landscape term during the period
of the residence of the Angles on the Jutland peninsula.
In the geographical
nomenclature of different languages, the word angle is used to denote the interfluve of converging rivers, as
well as the edge, the end of some territory. Allegedly, in Jutland, the angles
were somehow localized on the bend of the isthmus of this peninsula.
But the deep etymology of the ethnonym Angles is
different.
© A. F. Rogalev. Ethnonymy. Names of ancient peoples. – Gomel: Bark, 2021. S. 10–11.
