Anglo-Saxon的词源

英文词源

Anglo-Saxon

Old English Angli Saxones (plural), from Latin Anglo-Saxones, in which Anglo- is an adjective, thus literally "English Saxons," as opposed to those of the Continent (now called "Old Saxons"). Properly in reference to the Saxons of ancient Wessex, Essex, Middlesex, and Sussex.

I am a suthern man, I can not geste 'rum, ram, ruf' by letter. [Chaucer, "Parson's Prologue and Tale"]

After the Norman-French invasion of 1066, the peoples of the island were distinguished as English and French, but after a few generations all were English, and Latin-speaking scribes, who knew and cared little about Germanic history, began to use Anglo-Saxones to refer to the pre-1066 inhabitants and their descendants. When interest in Old English writing revived c. 1586, the word was extended to the language we now call Old English. It has been used rhetorically for "English" in an ethnological sense from 1832, and revisioned as Angle + Saxon.

中文词源

Anglo-Saxon：盎格鲁撒克逊人

Anglo, 同angle, 角，指盎格鲁人(原日耳曼民族）原先居住的土地形如牛角。Saxon，剑客，词源同saw, 砍，锯。可参照李赋宁《英语史》。

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：Anglo-Saxon 词源，Anglo-Saxon 含义。

Anglo-Saxon：盎格鲁-撒克逊人，盎格鲁-撒克逊语

约公元449年,居住于丹麦与德国北部的3个日耳曼人部族趁罗马帝国衰落入侵到大不列颠岛上。他们分别是盎格鲁人(Angles),萨克逊人(Saxons)和朱特人(Jutes)。在语言上,他们取代了当时该地所使用的凯尔特语。这三个日耳曼部族方言随着社会发展,逐渐融合为一种新的语言,即盎格鲁一萨克逊语(Anglo-Saxon),这就是后来形成的英语的基础。盎格鲁撒克逊语也被称为古英语。