England Information
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
WW - The chapel of King's College, Cambridge University.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Canterbury Cathedral is the mother church of the Church of England, a significant worldwide Christian denomination.
Until 1998, the Humber Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world.
Statue of Alfred the Great at Winchester.
An Anglo-Saxon helmet found at Sutton Hoo
Stonehenge, a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument in Wiltshire, thought to have been erected c.2000-2500BC.
Etymology
England is named after the Angles, the largest of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in England in the fifth and sixth centuries, and who are believed to have originated in the peninsula of Angeln, in what is now Denmark and northern Germany. (The further etymology of this tribe's name remains uncertain, although a popular theory holds that it need be sought no further than the word angle itself, and refers to a fish-hook-shaped region of Holstein.
The Angles' name has had a variety of different spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania, written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, together with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in the Ocean."
The early 8th century historian Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to the English people as Angelfolc (in English) or Angli (in Latin).
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of "England" referring to the southern part of the island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in 1538.
The word "England" is often used colloquially — and incorrectly — to refer to Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole. There are many instances of this usage in history, where references to "England" are actually intended to include Scotland and Wales as well. This term is used throughout the world and even by English people; the usage is problematic and causes offence in many parts of Britain.
The Angles' name has had a variety of different spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania, written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, together with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in the Ocean."
The early 8th century historian Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to the English people as Angelfolc (in English) or Angli (in Latin).
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of "England" referring to the southern part of the island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in 1538.
The word "England" is often used colloquially — and incorrectly — to refer to Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole. There are many instances of this usage in history, where references to "England" are actually intended to include Scotland and Wales as well. This term is used throughout the world and even by English people; the usage is problematic and causes offence in many parts of Britain.
