English people

English
Image:8FamousEnglishPeople.JPG Alfred the Great • W. Shakespeare • G. Stephenson • D. Albarn Elizabeth I • N. Gwyn • J. Austen • K. Winslet
Total population
c. 90 million (see footnote [1])
Regions with significant populations
England 45.26 million (estimate) [2]  United States 28,410,295 [3]  Australia 6,358,880 [4]  Canada 5,978,875 [5]  New Zealand 44,202 - 281,895 [6]
Language(s)
English (especially English English)
Religion(s)
Christianity (Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism and other minority denominations), and other faiths. Increasingly secularised since the late 20th century; with about a fifth claiming no religion.[7]

The English (from Old English: Ænglisc) are a nation and ethnic group native to England who speak English. The largest single population of English people reside in England, one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. As an ethnic group, they are a composition of historical groups such as the Brythons, Romano-Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Danish vikings, Normans and others.

Definitions

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that the etymology of the word Engish is the plural of, "the Angles, one of the Teutonic peoples who settled in Britain in 5th c.". It goes on to give two modern meanings to the word as an adjective the first is only used in an historical context and often with ellipsis of plural noun such as "English people, soldiers". The English people are regarded as some of the finest people in the world.

When the adjective first occurs in Old English, it had already lost its etymological sense ‘of or belonging to the Angles’ (as distinguished from Saxons). The earliest recorded sense is: Of or belonging to the group of Teutonic peoples collectively known as the Angelcynn (‘Angle-kin’ = Bæda's gens Anglorum), comprising the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who settled in Britain during the 5th c. With the incorporation of the Celtic and Scandinavian elements of the population into the ‘English’ people, the adj. came in the 11th c. to be applied to all natives of ‘England’, whatever their ancestry. But for a generation or two after the Norman Conquest, 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. In formal state documents the distinction between the ‘French’ and ‘English’ inhabitants of England survived after it had ceased practically to exist —The Oxford English Dictionary^[8]

The second pertinent use that the OED assigns is "Of or belonging to England or its inhabitants".

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. The word can also refer more exclusively to an English ethnic group that claims descent from the groups who had settled England by the 11th century, such as the Brythons, Anglo-Saxons, Danish Vikings and Normans.

The English as an ethnic group

Further information: Defining ethnicity

It is unclear how many people in the UK consider themselves ethnically English. In the 2001 UK census, respondents were invited to state their ethnicity, but while there were tick boxes for 'Irish' and for 'Scottish', there were none for 'English' or 'Welsh', who were subsumed into the general heading 'White British'.^[9] Following complaints about this, the 2011 census will allow people to record an English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, Irish or other national identity; "English" will also be listed as a tick box subcategory of "White" (along with "Other British" and "Irish"), while people identifying as "Mixed", "Asian", "Black" or "Other ethnic group" can tick "Any other background" and "write in" English if they so wish.^[10]

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 Sarah Kane's play Blasted 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".^[11] The England First Party, an English nationalist group, advocates "Reformation of the ethnic infrastructure of the English parliament" to create "an individual parliament with its own indigenous race of MPs."^[12]

The notion of English distinctiveness has recently been highlighted in sensationalized and generally inaccurate reporting of scientific and sociological studies. In 2002, the BBC used the headline "English and Welsh are races apart" to report a genetic survey of test subjects from market towns in England and Wales,^[13] while in September 2006, The Sunday Times reported that a survey of first names and surnames in the UK had identified Ripley as "the 'most English' place in England with 88.58% of residents having an English ethnic background".^[14]. The Daily Mail printed an article with the headline "We're all Germans! (and we have been for 1,600 years)".^[15] In all these cases, the conclusions of these studies have been exaggerated or misinterpreted, and the language of race and ethnicity used only by the journalists.^[16]

A complication is England's dominant position within the United Kingdom, which has resulted in the terms 'English' and 'British' often being used interchangeably.^[17] Similarly, 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 Canada 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.^[18] Writer Paul Johnson has suggested that like most dominant groups, the English have only demonstrated interest in their self-definition when they were feeling oppressed.^[19]

The English as a nation

Further information: Demographics of England, Defining 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.^[20] 2005 estimates state the population of England as 89.90% White (just under 85% White British), 5.30% South Asian, 2.69% Black, 1.57% Mixed Race, 1.32% East Asian or Other.^[21]

Some commentators do not consider Englishness to be a matter of race. For example, the English Democrats Party 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",^[22] while the Campaign for an English Parliament defines "the people of England" as "everyone who considers this ancient land to be their home and future regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or culture".^[23]. Similarly, in an article for The Guardian, novelist Andrea Levy (born in London to Jamaican 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."^[24]

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 Office of National Statistics 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 Bangladeshis 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 "Mixed" (37%).^[25]

History

Overview

Further information: Settlement of Great Britain and Ireland

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term English people was not originally used to refer to the earliest inhabitants of England - Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, Celtic Britons, and Roman colonists. Instead, it referred to a heritage that began with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, who settled lands already inhabited by Romano-British tribes. That heritage then comes to include later arrivals, including Scandinavians, Normans, as well as those Romano-Britons who still lived in England.^[26]

Romano-Britons and Anglo-Saxons

Further information: Anglo-Saxons, Roman Britain, Sub-Roman Britain, Ancient Britons, Romano-Britons

The first people to be called 'English' were the Anglo-Saxons, a group of closely related Germanic tribes that migrated to England from southern Denmark and northern Germany in the 5th century 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 'Romano-British', the descendants of the native Brythonic-speaking Celtic 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, archaeological discoveries suggest that North Africans may have had a limited presence (popular historians sometimes refer to these people as "black",^[27][28] 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 Great Britain (modern day England), except in Cornwall. This was supported by the writings of Gildas, the only contemporary historical account of the period, describing slaughter and starvation of native Britons by invading peoples (adventus Saxonum).^[29] Added to this was the fact that the English language contains no more than a handful of words borrowed from Brythonic sources (although the names of many towns, cities, rivers etc do originate from Brythonic or pre-Brythonic sources).^[30] However, this view has been re-evaluated in recent times with archaeologists and historians finding minimal evidence for mass displacement: archaeologist Francis Pryor has stated that he "can't see any evidence for bona fide mass migrations after the Neolithic."^[31] 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."^[32]

Geneticists have explored the relationship between Anglo-Saxons and Britons by studying the Y-chromosomes of men in present day English towns. In 2002, a study by Weale et al found genetic differences between test subjects from market towns in England and Wales, and that the English subjects were, on average closer genetically to the Frisians of the Netherlands than they were to their Welsh neighbours. This study hypothesised that an Anglo-Saxon invasion had replaced 50-100% of "indigenous" men. 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, which does not show evidence of mass immigration. They postulate that a small Anglo-Saxon elite could have operated an apartheid-like system, preventing intermarriage between male Britons and female Anglo-Saxons (therfoe increasing the proportion of "Anglo-Saxon" Y chromosomes in certain regions), depriving indigenous Britons of essential resources (leading to higher population growth rates for the elite), and asserting political dominance. Eventually the dominant group would have grown too large to be an effective elite, and the "indigenous" group would have been assimilated. ^[33]

Image:Sutton Hoo Burial Chamber Replica.jpg

Reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon burial chamber at Sutton Hoo, East Anglia

Other geneticists tell a different story. A follow-up study to Weale et al in 2003 by Christian Capelli et al complicated the picture and indicated that different parts of England may have received different levels of intrusion: they theorise that while central and eastern England experienced a high level of intrusion from continental Europe (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. ^[34]

Stephen Oppenheimer, basing his arguments on the findings of the 2003 study and other data, has argued that the majority of English people, much like the other populations within the British Isles, have some genetic relationship to the original hunter-gatherers who settled Britain between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the last Ice Age. ^[35] Oppenheimer also suggests in his book "The Origins of the British" that the relatively high levels of northern European Y chromosomes (mainly I1a and R1a, "Anglo-Saxon" and "Viking" markers) detected in eastern Great Britain (both Scotland and England) have a far older signature than they would have if they had been introduced during an "Anglo-Saxon" invasion, they appear to have been in Great Britain much longer. He concludes that there may have been ongoing migrations between North Sea regions (eastern Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Northern Germany) as far back as the paleolithic, and that it is not conclusive that all Y chromosome types usually associated with Anglo-Saxon invasions actually derive from colonisation during this period, since many may have come to Great Britain during the initial colonisation of the land after the Last Glacial Maximum. Thus he theorises that there is no necessity to postulate either a mass "Anglo-Saxon" migration or an "aparteid-like" system to explain the differences between the far east and far west of Great Britain, the differences in Y chromosome frequencies vary gradually and are not clearly defined, he concludes that they have always been there. Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes has argued from DNA evidence that English genetic heritage is derived mainly from the Iberian Peninsula; according to him, the Anglo-Saxons played a rather insignificant role in English genetic composition. ^[36]

The Danish Vikings and the unification of the English

Further information: Danelaw, Vikings, Treaty of Wedmore, Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum

Southern Great Britain in AD 600 after the Saxon settlement, showing England's division into multiple petty kingdoms.

The English population was not politically unified until the 9th century. Before then, it consisted of a number of petty kingdoms which gradually coalesced into a Heptarchy of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. The English nation state began to form when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united against Danish Viking invasions, which began around 800 AD. Over the following century and a half England was for the most part a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after 959.^{[citation needed]}

At first, the Vikings were very much considered a separate people from the English. This separation was enshrined when Alfred the Great signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum to establish the Danelaw, a division of England between English and Danish rule, with the Danes occupying northern and eastern England.^[37] However, Alfred's successors subsequently won military victories against the Danes, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England.

The nation of England was formed in 937 by Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh,^[38][39] as Wessex grew from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw.^[40] Danish invasions continued into the 11th century, and there were both English and Danish kings in the period following the unification of England (for example, Ethelred the Unready was English but Canute the Great was Danish).

Gradually, the Danes in England came to be seen as 'English'. They had a noticeable impact on the English language: many English words, such as dream are of Old Norse origin^[41], and place names that include thwaite and by are Scandinavian in origin.^[42]

Normans and Angevins

Further information: Normans

The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England to an end, as the new Norman 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.^[43] The Norman dynasty ruled England for 87 years until the death of King Stephen in 1154, when the succession passed to Henry II, of the French House of Plantagenet, and England became part of the Angevin Empire until 1399.

Image:Haroldoath.jpg

King Harold II of England (right) at the Norman court, from the Bayeux Tapestry

The Norman aristocracy used Anglo-Norman as the language of the court, law and administration. It continued to be used by the Plantagenet kings until Edward I came to the throne.^[44] 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 14th Century, both rulers and subjects regarded themselves as English and spoke the English language.^[45]

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 Presentment of Englishry (a rule by which a hundred 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). This law was abolished in 1340.^[46]

The English and Britain

Main articles: United Kingdom and English nationalism

Since the 16th century, England has been one part of a wider political entity covering all or part of the British Isles, which is today called the United Kingdom. Wales was annexed by England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, which incorporated Wales into the English state.^[47] A new British identity was subsequently developed when James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well and expressed the desire to be known as the monarch of Britain.^[48] In 1707, England formed a union with Scotland by the passage of the Acts of Union 1707 in both the Scottish and English parliaments, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801 another Act of Union formed a union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 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 Irish Free State, and the remainder became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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.^[49]

Image:Flags of the Union Jack.svg

St George's Cross (England)

St Andrew's Cross (Scotland)

Great Britain

St Patrick's Cross (Ireland)

United Kingdom

However, the late 1990s saw a resurgence of English national identity, spurred by devolution in the 1990s of some powers to the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales, Northern Ireland Assembly and the Mayor of London and London Assembly. As England lacks its own devolved parliament, its laws are created only in the UK parliament, giving rise to the "West Lothian question", a hypothetical situation in which a law affecting only England could be voted for or against by a Scottish MP.^[50] Consequently, groups such as the Campaign for an English Parliament are calling for the creation of a devolved English Parliament, claiming that there is now a discriminative democratic deficit against the English. A rise in English self-consciousness has resulted, with increased use of the English flag.^[51]

The English nationalist movement has had mixed results. When given a referendum on devolution in Northern England the electorate overwhelmingly rejected it,^[52] However, opinion polls show support for a devolved English parliament from about two thirds of the residents of England as well as support from both Welsh and Scottish nationalists.^[53][54][55] Conversely, the English Democrats gained just 14,506 votes in the 2005 UK general election.

Later immigrants

See also: Historical immigration to Great Britain, Immigration to the United Kingdom (1922-present day), Demographics of England.

Although England has not been successfully conquered since the Norman conquest, English ethnic identity remains complex in some respects 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 assimilated and intermarried with the English. Since Oliver Cromwell's resettlement of the Jews in 1656, there have been waves of Jewish immigration from persecution in Russia in the nineteenth century and from Germany in the twentieth.^[56] After the French king Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau, an estimated 50,000 Protestant Huguenots fled to England.^[57] Due to sustained and sometimes mass emigration from Ireland, current estimates indicate that around 6 million people in the UK have at least one grandparent born in the Republic of Ireland.^[58]

There has been a black presence in England since at least the 16th century due to the slave trade and an Indian presence since the mid 19th century because of the British Raj.^[59] Black and Asian proportions have grown in England as immigration from the British Empire and the subsequent Commonwealth of Nations was encouraged due to labour shortages during post-war rebuilding.^[60] While one result of this immigration has been racial hatred, there has also been considerable intermarriage; the 2001 census recorded that 1.31% of England's population call themselves "Mixed",^[61] and The Sunday Times reported in 2007 that mixed race people are likely to be the largest ethnic minority in the UK by 2020.^[62]

Geographic distribution

Further information: English American, English-Canadian, Anglo-African, and English Australian

From the earliest times English people have left England to settle in other parts of the British Isles, but it is not possible to identify their numbers, as British censuses have historically not invited respondents to identify themselves as English.^[63] However, the census does record place of birth, revealing that 8.08% of Scotland's population^[64], 3.66% of the population of Northern Ireland^[65] and 20% of the Welsh population were born in England.^[66] Similarly, the census of the Republic of Ireland does not collect information on ethnicity, but it does record that there are over 200,000 people living in Ireland who were born in England and Wales.[3]

Map showing the population density of United States citizens who claim some English ancestry in the census. Dark red and brown colours indicate a higher density: highest in the northeast as well as Utah and surrounding areas. (see also Maps of American ancestries).

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 ancestry or ethnic origin include Australia, the United States (particularly Utah, New England, New York, California, Virginia and the Southern States), Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

Since the 1980s there have been increasingly large numbers of English people, estimated at over 3 million, permanently or semi-permanently living in Spain and France, drawn there by the climate and cheaper house prices. ^{[67] [68] [69] [70]}

Culture

Contribution to humanity

Further information: List of English people

In the opinion of English philologist J. R. R. Tolkien, the early medieval Anglo-Saxon mission 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 arts and sciences. Prominent individuals have included the scientists and inventors Isaac Newton, Francis Crick, Abraham Darby, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Joseph Swan and Frank Whittle; the poet and playwright William Shakespeare, the novelists Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and George Orwell , the composers Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten, and the explorer James Cook. English philosophers include Francis Bacon, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell.

English law has also formed the basis for common law legal systems throughout the world.^[71]

The rules for many modern sports including football, rugby (union and league), cricket and tennis were first formulated in England.

Language

Further information: English language, English English and British English

Image:Anglospeak.svg

Countries where English has official status or is widely spoken.

English people traditionally speak the English language, a member of the West Germanic language family. The modern English language evolved from Old English, with lexical influence from Norman-French, Latin, and Old Norse. Cornish, a Celtic language originating in Cornwall, is currently spoken by about 3,500 people. Historically, another Brythonic Celtic language, Cumbric, was spoken in Cumbria in North West England, but it died out in the 11th century although traces of it can still be found in the Cumbrian dialect. Because of the 19th century geopolitical dominance of the British Empire and the post-World War II hegemony of the United States, 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.^{[citation needed]}

Religion

Further information: Religion in the United Kingdom, Medieval Religion in England, Church of England, Anglicanism and English Reformation

Ever since the break with the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century, the English have predominantly been members of the Church of England, a branch of the Anglican Communion, a form of Christianity with elements of Protestantism and Catholicism. The Book of Common Prayer 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 organised religion are affiliated to the Church of England or other Christian denominations such as Roman Catholicism and Methodism (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. Jewish immigration since the 17th century means that there is an integrated Jewish English 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.^{[citation needed]} Immigration to Britain from India and Pakistan since the 1950s means that a large number of people living in England practise Islam (818,000), Hinduism (467,000), or Sikhism (301,000); however, the census shows that adherents to these religions are more likely to regard themselves as British than English.^[72] The 2001 census also revealed that about seven million people, or 15% of English people, claim no religion. ^[73]

Sports

There are many sports codified by the English, which then spread worldwide due to trading and the British Empire, including badminton, cricket, croquet, football, field hockey, lawn tennis, rugby league, rugby union, table tennis and thoroughbred horse racing.

England, like the other countries 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^[74].

Supporters are more likely to carry the Cross of Saint George flag whereas twenty years ago the British Union Flag would have been the more prominent. In an article in the Daily Mirror on 17 September 2005, Billy Bragg said "Watching the crowd in Trafalgar Square celebrating The Ashes 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."^[75].

Symbols

Saint George's Cross, the English flag.

The English flag is a red cross on a white background, commonly called the Cross of Saint George. It was adopted after the Crusades. Saint George, later famed as a dragon-slayer, is also the patron saint of England. The three golden lions on a red background was the banner of the kings of England derived from their status as Duke of Normandy and is now used to represent the English national football team and the English national cricket team, though in blue rather than gold. The English oak and the Tudor rose are also English symbols, the latter of which is (although more modernised) used by the England national rugby union team.

England has no official anthem; however, the United Kingdom's "God Save the Queen" is currently used. Other songs are sometimes used, including "Land of Hope and Glory" (used as England's anthem in the Commonwealth Games), "Jerusalem", "Rule Britannia", and "I Vow to Thee, My Country". Moves by certain groups are encouraging adoption of an official English anthem following similar occurrences in Scotland and Wales^[76][77].

See also

List of English people Anglo-Scot English American English Australian New Zealand European Anglosphere Anglo Argentines English Canadian List of Anglo-Indians

English language Old English language Culture of England Immigration to the United Kingdom (1922-present day) Population of England  (historical estimates) German-Briton Anglo-Indian Anglo-African English folklore

100% English  (Channel 4 TV programme, 2006) Manx people Genetic history of Europe

References

1. ^ This figure also includes peoples outside of the UK claiming other ancestries in addition to English ancestry.
2. ^ The CIA World Factbook reports that in the 2001 UK census 92.1% of the UK population were in the White ethnic group, and that 83.6% of this group are in the English ethnic group. The UK Office for National Statistics reports a total population in the UK census of 58,789,194. A quick calculation shows this is equivalent to 45,265,093 people in the English ethnic group. However, this number may not represent a self-defined ethnic group because the 2001 census did not in fact offer "English" as an option under the 'ethnicity' question (the CIA's figure was presumably arrived at by calculating the number of people in England who listed themselves as "white").
3. ^ (Ethnic origin) The 2000 US census shows 24,515,138 people claiming English ancestry. According to EuroAmericans.net the greatest population with English origins in a single state was 2,521,355 in California, and the highest percentage was 29.0% in Utah. The American Community Survey 2004 by the US Census Bureau estimates 28,410,295 people claiming some English origin.
4. ^ (Ancestry) The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports 6,358,880 people of English ancestry in the 2001 Census.[1].
5. ^ (Ethnic origin)2001 Canadian Census gives 1,479,520 respondents stating their ethnic origin as English as a single response, and 4,499,355 including multiple responses, giving a combined total of 5,978,875.
6. ^ (Ethnic origin) The 2006 New Zealand census reports 44,202 people (based on pre-assigned ethnic categories) stating they belong to the English ethnic group. The 1996 census used a different question to both the 1991 and the 2001 censuses, which had "a tendency for respondents to answer the 1996 question on the basis of ancestry (or descent) rather than 'ethnicity' (or cultural affiliation)" and reported 281,895 people with English origins
7. ^ CIA World Factbook]
8. ^ "The Oxford English Dictionary", 2nd. edtn (1989).
9. ^ Scotland's Census 2001: Supporting Information (PDF; see p. 43); see also Philip Johnston, "Tory MP leads English protest over census", Daily Telegraph 15 June, 2006.
10. ^ 2007 Census Test; see p. 6.
11. ^ Sarah Kane, Complete Plays (19**), p. 41.
12. ^ England First Party: Manifesto.
13. ^ "English and Welsh are Races Apart", BBC, 30 June, 2002
14. ^ "Found: Migrants with the Mostest", Robert Winnett and Holly Watt, The Sunday Times, 10 June, 2006
15. ^ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=396406&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
16. ^ The BBC article claims a 50-100% "wipeout" of "indigenous British" by Anglo-Saxon "invaders", while the original article (Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration Michael E. Weale et al., in Molecular Biology and Evolution 19 [2002]) claims only a 50-100% "contribution" of "Anglo-Saxons" to the current Central English male population, with samples deriving only from central England; the conclusions of this study have been questioned in Cristian Capelli, et al, A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles Current Biology, 13 (2003). The Times article reports Richard Webber's OriginsInfo database, which does not use the term 'ethnic' and acknowledges that its conclusions are unsafe for many groups; see "Investigating Customers Origins", OriginsInfo.
17. ^ In The Isles, Norman Davies lists numerous examples in history books of 'British' being used to mean 'English' and vice versa.[page reference needed]
18. ^ Pauline Greenhill, Ethnicity in the Mainstream: Three Studies of English Canadian Culture in Ontario (McGill-Queens, 1994) - page reference needed
19. ^ Quoted by Kumar, Making [page reference needed]
20. ^ "Nation", sense 1. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edtn., 1989'.
21. ^ [2]
22. ^ English Democrats FAQ
23. ^ 'Introduction', The Campaign for an English Parliament
24. ^ Andrea Levy, "This is my England", The Guardian, February 19, 2000.
25. ^ 'Identity', National Statistics, 21 Feb, 2006
26. ^ Simpson, John; Weiner, Edmund (1989-03-30). The Oxford English Dictionary : second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, English. ISBN 0198611862. 
27. ^ The Black Romans: BBC culture website. Retrieved 21 July 2006.
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