English people

The English (from ) are a  and  native to  and who speak. The largest single population of English people reside in England —  the largest  of the.

Definitions
The  (OED) states that the earliest recorded sense of the word 'English' is "Of or belonging to the group of peoples collectively known as the Angelcynn [...] comprising the, , and , who  settled in Britain during the .". However, the OED continues that With the incorporation of the and  elements of the population into the ‘English’ people, the  came in the  to be applied to all natives of ‘England’, whatever their ancestry. But for a generation or two after the, the descendants of the invaders, though born in England, continued to be regarded as ‘French’, so that the word English, as applied to persons, was for a time restricted to those whose ancestors were settled in England before the Conquest."

Today, the word can be used to refer to an 'English nation' comprising anyone who considers themselves English and are considered English by most other people (see ). However, this definition is not shared by all writers, some of whom (wrongly) perceive the English more exclusively as an "Anglo-Saxon", or at least a "" that shares a common ancestry.

The English as an ethnic group
It is unclear how many people in the UK consider themselves ethnically English. In the, respondents were invited to state their ethnicity, but while there were for  and for , there were none for 'English' or '', who were subsumed into the general heading 'White British'. Following complaints about this, the 2011 census will "allow respondents to record their English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, Irish or other identity" ; "English" will be listed as a subcategory of "White".

Some people see important ethnic differences between those with long-standing English ancestry and those whose ancestors arrived in England more recently: for example in 's play  the character Ian boasts "I'm not an import", contrasting himself with the children of immigrants: "they have their kids, call them English, they're not English, born in England don't make you English".

A complication is England's dominant position within the, which has resulted in the terms 'English' and 'British' often being used interchangeably. Relatedly, studies of people with English ancestry have shown that they tend not to regard themselves as an ethnic group, even when they live in other countries. Patricia Greenhill studied people in with English heritage, and found that they did not think of themselves as "ethnic", but rather as "normal" or "mainstream", an attitude Greenhill attributes to the cultural dominance of the English in Canada. Writer has suggested that like most dominant groups, the English have only demonstrated interest in their self-definition when they were feeling oppressed.

Despite these complexities, the notion of English ethnic distinctiveness has been highlighted in sensationalized and generally inaccurate reporting of scientific and sociological studies. In, the used the headline "English and Welsh are races apart" to report a genetic survey of test subjects from s in England and Wales, while in September 2006,  reported that a survey of first names and surnames in the UK had identified  as "the 'most English' place in England with 88.58% of residents having an English ethnic background". In both cases, the conclusions of these studies have been exaggerated and the language of race and ethnicity used only by the journalists.

The English as a nation
The phrase, "the English people", can also be used more inclusively to discuss the English as a "nation" rather than an ethnic group, using the OED's definition of "nation" as a group united by factors that include "language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory", rather than ancestral ties alone.

The concept of an 'English nation' (as opposed to a British one) has become increasingly popular after the process in,  and  resulted in those three nations having semi-independent political and legal systems. Although England itself still lacks self-government, the 1990s witnessed a rise in English self-consciousness. While there can be an ethnic component to expressions of English national identity, most political do not consider Englishness to be genetic. For example, the states that "We do not claim Englishness to be purely ethnic or purely cultural, but it is a complex mix of the two. We firmly believe Englishness is a state of mind", while the  says, "The people of England includes everyone who considers this ancient land to be their home and future regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or culture". .

In an article for , novelist (born in London to n parents) calls England a separate country "without any doubt" and asserts that she is "English. Born and bred, as the saying goes. (As far as I can remember, it is born and bred and not born-and-bred-with-a-very-long-line-of-white-ancestors-directly-descended-from-Anglo-Saxons.)" Arguing that "England has never been an exclusive club, but rather a hybrid nation", she writes that "Englishness must never be allowed to attach itself to ethnicity. The majority of English people are white, but some are not ... Let England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland be nations that are plural and inclusive."

However, this use of the word "English" is complicated by the fact that most non-white people in England have a greater allegiance to Britain as a whole than to England. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people described their nationality as "English", the vast majority of non-white people called themselves "British". For example, "78 per cent of s 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 "" (37%).

Overview
The term 'English people' is not normally used to refer to the earliest inhabitants of England: s, , and  colonists. Instead it refers to a heritage that begins with the arrival of the in the  who settled lands already inhabited by Romano-British tribes. That heritage then comes to include later arrivals, including s,, and other groups, as well as those Romano-Britons who still lived in England.

The Anglo-Saxons and previous inhabitants
The first people to be called 'English' were the, who are believed to originate from tribes that migrated to England from southern  and northern  in the  AD after the Romans retreated from Britain. The Anglo-Saxons gave their name to England (Angle-land) and to the English people.

However, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in a land that was already populated by people commonly referred to as the '', the descendants of the native Brythonic-speaking ic population that lived in the area of Britain under Roman rule during the 1st-5th centuries AD. Furthermore, the multi-ethnic nature of the Roman Empire meant that other peoples were also present in England before the Anglo-Saxons arrived: for example, discoveries suggest that North Africans may have had a limited presence (popular historians sometimes refer to these people as "black",  although this description is debatable since not all North Africans are black).

The exact nature of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and their relationship with the Romano-British is a matter of debate. Traditionally, it was believed that a mass invasion by various Anglo-Saxon tribes largely displaced the indigenous British population in southern and eastern (modern day England), except in. However, archaeologists and historians have found minimal evidence for this: archaeologist has stated that he "can't see any evidence for bona fide mass migrations after the ." Historian Malcolm Todd writes
 * "It is much more likely that a large proportion of the British population remained in place and was progressively dominated by a Germanic aristocracy, in some cases marrying into it and leaving Celtic names in the, admittedly very dubious, early lists of Anglo-Saxon dynasties. But how we identify the surviving Britons in areas of predominantly Anglo-Saxon settlement, either archaeologically or linguistically, is still one of the deepest problems of early English history."

Geneticists have explored the relationship between Anglo-Saxons and Britons by studying the of men in present day English towns. In, a study by Weale et al found a considerable genetic difference between test subjects from s in England and Wales, and that the English subjects were, on average closer genetically to the of the  than they were to their Welsh neighbours. This conclusion seemed to indicate that the Anglo-Saxons purged England of its previous inhabitants. A 2006 study led by Mark Thomas used computer simulations to find a possible reason for the divergence between these finds and the archaeological record. They concluded that the likeliest explanation was that the Anglo-Saxons operated an -like system, preventing intermarriage between Britons and Anglo-Saxons and asserting political dominance.

Other geneticists tell a different story. A follow-up study to Weale et al in by Christian Capelli et al complicated Weale's conclusions, indicating that different parts of England received different levels of intrusion from outsiders: while  and  experienced a high level of intrusion from  (the study could not distinguish Germans from Danes and Frisians), southern England did not and the population there appears to be largely descended from the indigenous Britons (the scientists acknowledge that this conclusion is "startling"). The 2003 study also noted that the transition between England and Wales is more gradual than the earlier study suggested. , basing his arguments on the findings of the 2003 study, has argued that the majority of English people, much like the other populations within the, have some genetic relationship to the original hunter-gatherers who settled Britain between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the last. And Oxford geneticist has argued from DNA evidence that English genetic heritage is derived mainly from the ; according to him, the s played a rather insignificant role in English genetic composition.

The Danish Vikings and the unification of the English
The English population was not politically unified until the. Before then, it consisted of a number of s which gradually coalesced into a of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were  and. The English began to form when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united against Danish Viking invasions, which began around  AD. Over the following century and a half England was for the most part a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after.

At first, the Vikings were very much considered a separate people from the English. This separation was enshrined when signed the  to establish the, a division of England between English and Danish rule, with the Danes occupying northern and eastern England. However, Alfred's successors subsequently won military victories against the Danes, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England.

The of England was formed in  by  of  after the,  as Wessex grew from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all  kingdoms and the. Danish invasions continued into the, and there were both English and Danish kings in the period following the unification of England (for example, was English but  was Danish).

Gradually, the Danes in England came to be seen as 'English'. They had a noticeable impact on the : many English words, such as dream are of origin, and place names that include thwaite and by are Scandinavian in origin.

Normans and Angevins
The of  brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England to an end, as the new  elite almost universally replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders. After the conquest, the term "English people" normally included all natives of England, whether they were of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Celtic ancestry, to distinguish them from the Norman invaders, who were regarded as "French" even if born in England, for a generation or two after the Conquest. The Norman dynasty ruled England for 87 years until the death of in 1154, when the succession passed to, of the French , and England became part of the  until.

The Norman aristocracy used as the language of the court, law and administration. It continued to be used by the Plantagenet kings. However, over time the English language became more important even in the court, and the French were gradually assimilated into the English people, until, by the late 1200s, both rulers and subjects regarded themselves as English and spoke the English language.

Despite the assimilation of the French, the distinction between 'English' and 'French' survived in official documents long after it had fallen out of common use, in particular in the legal phrase  (a rule by which a had to prove an unidentified murdered body found on their soil to be that of an Englishman, rather than a Norman, if they wanted to avoid a fine).

The English and Britain
Since the, England has been one part of a wider political entity covering all or part of the , which is today called the. was by England by the, which incorporated Wales into the English state. A new British identity was subsequently developed when became King of both England and Scotland and expressed the desire to be known as the monarch of Britain. In 1707, England formed a union with by the passage of the  in both the  and  parliaments, creating the. In 1801 another formed a union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the  creating the. About two thirds of Irish population, (those who lived in 26 of the 34 counties of Ireland) left the United Kingdom in 1922 to form the, and the remainder became the.

Throughout the history of the UK, the English have been dominant in terms of population and political weight. As a consequence, the notions of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness' are often very similar. At the same time, after the 1707 Union, the English, along with the other peoples of the British Isles, have been encouraged to think of themselves as British rather than identifying themselves by the smaller constituent nations.

However, the late 1990s saw a resurgence of English national identity, spurred by in,  and , which has given semi-independence to those countries. As England lacks its own devolved parliament, its laws are created only in the UK parliament, giving rise to the "", a hypothetical situation in which a law affecting only England could be voted for or against by a Scottish MP. Consequently, groups such as the are calling for the creation of a, claiming that there is now a discriminative democratic deficit against the English. This resurgence of sometimes has an ethnic dimension; for example, the  advocates "Reformation of the ethnic infrastructure of the English parliament" to create "an individual parliament with its own indigenous race of MPs."

Later immigrants

 * ''See also:, ,.

Although England has not been successfully conquered since the Norman conquest, English ethnic identity remains complex because England has been the destination of several mass emigrations since the seventeenth century. While some members of these groups maintain a separate ethnic identity, others have or  with the English. Since 's in, there have been waves of  immigration from persecution in Russia in the nineteenth century and from Germany in the twentieth. After the French king declared  illegal in  with the, an estimated 50,000 Protestant s fled to England. Due to sustained and sometimes mass emigration from, current estimates indicate that around 6 million people in the UK have at least one grandparent born in the.

There has been a presence in England since at least the 16th century due to the  and an Indian presence since the mid 19th century because of the. and proportions have grown in England as immigration from the British Empire and the subsequent  was encouraged due to labour shortages during post-war rebuilding. While one result of this immigration has been, there has also been considerable ; the 2001 census recorded that 1.31% of England's population call themselves "Mixed", and  reported in that  people are likely to be the largest  in the UK by.

Geographic distribution
From the earliest times English people have left England to settle in other parts of the, but it is not possible to identify their numbers, as British censuses have historically not invited respondents to identify themselves as English. However, the census does record place of birth, revealing that 8.08% of Scotland's population, 3.66% of the population of and 20% of the Welsh population were born in England. Similarly, the census of the does not collect information on ethnicity, but it does record that there are over 200,000 people living in Ireland who were born in.



English emigrant and descent communities are found across the world, and in some places, settled in significant numbers. Countries with significant numbers of people of English or  include the  (particularly, , , ,  and the ), , ,  and.

Contribution to humanity
In the opinion of English philologist, the early medieval to the Frankish Empire was "among our chief contributions to Europe, considering all our history".

The English have played a significant role in the development of the and s. Prominent individuals have included the scientists and inventors, , , , ,  and ; the poet and playwright , the novelists , ,  and  , the composers  and , and the explorer. English philosophers include, , , , , and.

has also formed the basis for legal systems throughout the world.

The rules for many modern sports including, ( and ),  and  were first formulated in England.

Language
English people traditionally speak the, a member of the language family. The modern English language evolved from, with lexical influence from Norman-French, Latin, and Old Norse. In addition, is also used by a number of speakers across England, predominantly on the border with Wales although there are also some 50,000 Welsh speakers in the. A third language traditionally spoken is, a originating in , currently spoken by about 3,500 people. A fourth language also of the Brythonic Celtic group,, used to be spoken in in northwest England, but it died out in the 11th century although traces of it can still be found in the Cumbrian dialect. The Cumbric language recontstruction is currently being attempted. Because of the 19th century geopolitical dominance of the and the post-World War II hegemony of the, English has become the international language of business, science, communications, aviation, and diplomacy. English is the native language of roughly 350 million people worldwide, with another 1.5 billion people who speak it as a second language.

Religion
Ever since the break with the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, the English have predominantly been members of the, a branch of the , a form of Christianity with elements of Protestantism and Catholicism. The is the foundational prayer book of the Church of England and replaced the various Latin rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

Today, most English people practising organized religion are affiliated to the Church of England or other denominations such as  and  (itself originally a movement within the Anglican Church). In the 2001 Census, a little over 37 million people in England and Wales professed themselves to be Christian. ish immigration since the seventeenth century means that there is an integrated population, mainly in urban areas. 252,000 Jews were recorded in England & Wales in the 2001 Census; however this represents a decline of about 50% over the previous 50 years, caused by emigration and intermarriage. Immigration to Britain from and  since the 1950s means that a large number of people living in England practise  (818,000),  (467,000), or  (301,000); however, the census shows that adherents to these religions are more likely to regard themselves as British than English. The 2001 census also revealed that about seven million people, or 15% of English people, claim no religion.

Sports
There are many sports codified by the English, which then spread worldwide due to trading and the British Empire, including, , , , , , , , and.

England, like the other nations of the United Kingdom, competes as a separate nation in some international sporting events. The English football, cricket and rugby union teams have contributed to an increasing sense of English identity. The England Cricket team actually represents England and Wales.

Supporters are more likely to carry the whereas twenty years ago the British  would have been the more prominent. In an article in the  on 17 September 2005, said "Watching the crowd in Trafalgar Square celebrating  win, I couldn't help but be amazed at how quickly the flag of St George has replaced the Union Flag in the affections of England fans. A generation ago, England games looked a lot like Last Night of the Proms, with the red, white and blue firmly to the fore. Now, it seems, the English have begun to remember who they are." .

Symbols
The English flag is a red cross on a white background, commonly called the. It was adopted after the. , later famed as a dragon-slayer, is also the patron saint of England. The three golden lions or leopards on a red background was the banner of the kings of England derived from their status as and is now used to represent the  and the, though in blue rather than gold. The English and the  are also English symbols, the latter of which is (although more modernised) used by the.

England has no official ; however, the United Kingdom's "" is widely regarded as England's unofficial national anthem. Other songs are sometimes used, including "" (used as England's anthem in the ), "", "", and "".