English people

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 Angelcynn, 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, Frisians, and Jutes who settled in eastern and southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Western Roman Empire, and the Romano-British Brittonic speakers who already lived there. 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. Some definitions of English people include, while others exclude, people descended from later migration into England.