Anglo-Saxon

"Anglo-Saxon" in linguistics is still used as a term for the original West Germanic.

The term "Anglo-Saxon" first appears in the time of King Alfred the Great. The term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in continental writing nearly a century before Alfred's time by Paul the Deacon, historian of the Lombards, probably to distinguish the English Saxons from the continental Saxons.

The term is a compound of two tribal names, each deriving from what is now Northern Germany, namely the Angles and Saxons.
The Old English terms ænglisc and Angelcynn ("Angle-kin") when they are first attested, had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles to the exclusion of the Saxons, and in their earliest recorded sense refer to the nation of Germanic peoples who settled England in and after the 5th century.

While the name Angles is continued in the modern endonym of the English, the name of the Saxons survives in the Welsh and Gaelic names, Saeson and Sassenach.

The modern english language which was later expanded and developed through the influence of Old Norse and Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as Old English.

"Anglo-Saxon" is often used to designate any of the modern peoples of the British Isles and their descendants throughout the world. The definition has varied from time to time and varies from place to place.

Outside Anglophone countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world, the term "Anglo-Saxon" and its direct translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States and other countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Recent genetic testing has suggested that only twenty per cent of the native English are genetically Anglo-Saxon, and that almost all the rest is nearly identical to the Scots, Irish, and particularly, the Welsh.