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Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? I don’t bother to call myself anything other than white, Anglo Saxon, European, Caucasian. It wouldn’t make sense otherwi

Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? I don’t bother to call myself anything other than white, Anglo Saxon, European, Caucasian. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. I have Irish, English, Italian, and post world war 2 immigrated Polish direct ancestors. I don’t know what else to call myself nor do I particularly care. I don’t have a strong personal sense of identity tied up with any of those things. They are just words I assume apply to me when people use them.

klodolph 5y ago
Anglo-Saxon is a somewhat outdated term that refers to the Germanic people that inhabit England and Wales. Easy way to remember is if you take "Anglo" + "Land" you get "Anglo-land", which morphs into the term "England". Modern historians don't use the term Anglo-Saxon much these days, so it's not especially important.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  > Modern historians don't use the term Anglo-Saxon much these days, so it's not especially important. To you. And to a bunch of people who have to live in fear of being canceled - a.k.a., fired for - in the case of historians - reminding the world of uncomfortable truths.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Historians don't use the term because it's a bit imprecise and outdated. If you were talking about the "Anglo-Saxon language", you would probably say "Old English" instead. If you were talking about the people, you would probably want to make it clear whether you were talking about the Germanic tribes who migrated to England starting in the 5th century, or whether you were talking about the English people in the 5th-11th century, which also included the indigenous British population. Just as an illustration of why the term "Anglo-Saxon" muddles things, we have the person in the article who seems to think that Murphy is an Anglo-Saxon surname, when it is clearly Celtic in origin. I'm not doubting that the author is Anglo-Saxon... just pointing out that his suname, itself, is not. I'm not a historian, so I'm just relating the parts of the issue that I understand. There are articles online by historians that go into greater depth explaining why historians tend to avoid the term "Anglo-Saxon" these days, and why the term became so popular in the 18th and 19th century. Not sure what "uncomfortable truth" you are referring to. If you have something to say, spit it out. I also don't understand why someone would "fear being canceled" just because they used a somewhat obsolete term.
Swizec 5y ago
Those are fighting words in Europe. We are very serious about our ethnicism. Akin to saying that someone from Philly might as well be from LA, it’s all just a city. Or that the Warriors might as well be the New York Yankees, it’s just sports. PS; this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren’t considered white until pretty late into the 1900’s in USA – not anglo-saxon
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  I guess that explains the downvotes. Over hear in America it’s not fighting words, it’s just my family tree.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  That is nationalism. Northern French genes look like anglo-saxon or viking while southern France genes looks Ibarian or Italian. The generic pool in europe doesn't map to one country one set of genes usually. Some do better than others. At what point does someone become French considering it has been a melting pot for a long time?
  - Swizec 5y ago
    In my experience the typical perception is that you’re X when your parents and grandparents are all X, hopefully also great grandparents. There is a lot more melting recently. Europe historically has been pretty big on cultural identity because everyone had/has a grudge with their neighbors for trying to assimilate them at the edges. Slavs for example (I’m from Slovenia) can trace or Slavic lineage all the way back to the 600’s and the fact we haven’t been assimilated into German or Italian despite being part of their countries for centuries is a point of pride. There is still a recognized small German minority in Slovenia from back in the 1300’s when they tried to deal with the slavic problem by encouraging people to go settle in our area, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire but we of course wanted to keep it Slavic. To be fair, as late as the 1940’s the germans were trying to germanize the slavs. Some of these grudges are very fresh and ongoing. Look at how the Catalonians are fighting against being called Spanish
    - 5y ago
ipaddr 5y ago
No you probably come from a slav tribe. Saxons were a tribe in Germany. Anglos a different tribe. Take an ancestry / 23andme/ myheritage test and see what comes up. You would be surprised.
- Retric 5y ago
  Just realize those generic tests are designed more for entertainment than scientific rigor. They are looking at associations between genetic traits and groups, but it’s not like those groups where clones of each other or even genetically isolated.
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    They’re not 100% rigorous but mine at least was pretty accurate, matching what I knew to be true from family oral history.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Slavs were not a tribe in Germany. Slavs speak an entirely different language family from the Germanic one, as different as the Romance one. The Slavic language family stretches from Russian through Ukrainian and Belarusian, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Serb and Slovene, among others.
  - type0 5y ago
    Slavic languages are as broad or more broad as Germanic ones. Ethnicity and the mother tongue does not always go together, see for example Wallonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallonia
LatteLazy 5y ago
Angles and saxons were 2 tribes from modern day Germany who migrated to England for better farming and conditions. They're a very small part of "white". A very small part even of "British" descent. Even in England, not everyone is Anglo Saxon, the ruling classes are Norman, there are Celts still, Cornish people count themselves out, Londoners date back to pre-Roman times, vikings settled some areas...
- jcranmer 5y ago
  Actually, the term Anglo-Saxon refers to the traditionally three tribes (and probably at least four tribes) who emigrated from the Frisian coast region (North Sea coasts of Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands): the Jutes (traditionally originating from Jutland, the main Danish peninsula), the Angles (traditionally from the neck that is part Danish and part German), and the Saxons (which would have been from what is now northern Germany). The fourth group of the Frisian coast is of course the Frisians, (originating from what is now northern Netherlands), and while they are not traditionally held to have been part of the emigration, it's thought that they also made the journey. Frisian today is one of the closest languages to English. It also doesn't help that our literary sources for this period are very few, non-contemporary (i.e., talking about what happened a few centuries ago), and reliant on state societies talking about non-state societies. Naturally, they use inconsistent terminology for talking about the ethnicity of who is where, and the term "Saxon" appears to be pretty interchangeable for much of northern Germany. The modern term "Anglo-Saxon" thus effectively means "English German," arising largely to distinguish the Saxons who lived in England from those who lived in Germany. Functionally speaking, you can divide the ethnicities of Britain into 5: the original Celtic speakers, the Romanized Celtics who were part of the province of Britannia, the first wave of Germanic immigrants (Anglo-Saxons), the second wave of Germanic immigrants (the Norse), and the third wave of Germanic immigrants (the Normans), this one largely limited to a very small ruling class.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Thanks, that's a great comment! One question, do the Normans count as Germanic? I thought they were from Scandinavia originally and then spent enough time in France to pick up the language?
jhgb 5y ago
> Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? Are not all black people Yoruba? (Well, of course they aren't...)

klodolph 5y ago

Anglo-Saxon is a somewhat outdated term that refers to the Germanic people that inhabit England and Wales. Easy way to remember is if you take "Anglo" + "Land" you get "Anglo-land", which morphs into the term "England". Modern historians don't use the term Anglo-Saxon much these days, so it's not especially important.

cbozeman 5y ago
> Modern historians don't use the term Anglo-Saxon much these days, so it's not especially important. To you. And to a bunch of people who have to live in fear of being canceled - a.k.a., fired for - in the case of historians - reminding the world of uncomfortable truths.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Historians don't use the term because it's a bit imprecise and outdated. If you were talking about the "Anglo-Saxon language", you would probably say "Old English" instead. If you were talking about the people, you would probably want to make it clear whether you were talking about the Germanic tribes who migrated to England starting in the 5th century, or whether you were talking about the English people in the 5th-11th century, which also included the indigenous British population. Just as an illustration of why the term "Anglo-Saxon" muddles things, we have the person in the article who seems to think that Murphy is an Anglo-Saxon surname, when it is clearly Celtic in origin. I'm not doubting that the author is Anglo-Saxon... just pointing out that his suname, itself, is not. I'm not a historian, so I'm just relating the parts of the issue that I understand. There are articles online by historians that go into greater depth explaining why historians tend to avoid the term "Anglo-Saxon" these days, and why the term became so popular in the 18th and 19th century. Not sure what "uncomfortable truth" you are referring to. If you have something to say, spit it out. I also don't understand why someone would "fear being canceled" just because they used a somewhat obsolete term.

Swizec 5y ago

Those are fighting words in Europe. We are very serious about our ethnicism. Akin to saying that someone from Philly might as well be from LA, it’s all just a city. Or that the Warriors might as well be the New York Yankees, it’s just sports. PS; this is why Italians, Irish, Polish etc weren’t considered white until pretty late into the 1900’s in USA – not anglo-saxon

the_lonely_road 5y ago
I guess that explains the downvotes. Over hear in America it’s not fighting words, it’s just my family tree.
ipaddr 5y ago
That is nationalism. Northern French genes look like anglo-saxon or viking while southern France genes looks Ibarian or Italian. The generic pool in europe doesn't map to one country one set of genes usually. Some do better than others. At what point does someone become French considering it has been a melting pot for a long time?
- Swizec 5y ago
  In my experience the typical perception is that you’re X when your parents and grandparents are all X, hopefully also great grandparents. There is a lot more melting recently. Europe historically has been pretty big on cultural identity because everyone had/has a grudge with their neighbors for trying to assimilate them at the edges. Slavs for example (I’m from Slovenia) can trace or Slavic lineage all the way back to the 600’s and the fact we haven’t been assimilated into German or Italian despite being part of their countries for centuries is a point of pride. There is still a recognized small German minority in Slovenia from back in the 1300’s when they tried to deal with the slavic problem by encouraging people to go settle in our area, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire but we of course wanted to keep it Slavic. To be fair, as late as the 1940’s the germans were trying to germanize the slavs. Some of these grudges are very fresh and ongoing. Look at how the Catalonians are fighting against being called Spanish
  - 5y ago

ipaddr 5y ago

No you probably come from a slav tribe. Saxons were a tribe in Germany. Anglos a different tribe. Take an ancestry / 23andme/ myheritage test and see what comes up. You would be surprised.

Retric 5y ago
Just realize those generic tests are designed more for entertainment than scientific rigor. They are looking at associations between genetic traits and groups, but it’s not like those groups where clones of each other or even genetically isolated.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  They’re not 100% rigorous but mine at least was pretty accurate, matching what I knew to be true from family oral history.
barry-cotter 5y ago
Slavs were not a tribe in Germany. Slavs speak an entirely different language family from the Germanic one, as different as the Romance one. The Slavic language family stretches from Russian through Ukrainian and Belarusian, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Serb and Slovene, among others.
- type0 5y ago
  Slavic languages are as broad or more broad as Germanic ones. Ethnicity and the mother tongue does not always go together, see for example Wallonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallonia

LatteLazy 5y ago

Angles and saxons were 2 tribes from modern day Germany who migrated to England for better farming and conditions. They're a very small part of "white". A very small part even of "British" descent. Even in England, not everyone is Anglo Saxon, the ruling classes are Norman, there are Celts still, Cornish people count themselves out, Londoners date back to pre-Roman times, vikings settled some areas...

jcranmer 5y ago
Actually, the term Anglo-Saxon refers to the traditionally three tribes (and probably at least four tribes) who emigrated from the Frisian coast region (North Sea coasts of Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands): the Jutes (traditionally originating from Jutland, the main Danish peninsula), the Angles (traditionally from the neck that is part Danish and part German), and the Saxons (which would have been from what is now northern Germany). The fourth group of the Frisian coast is of course the Frisians, (originating from what is now northern Netherlands), and while they are not traditionally held to have been part of the emigration, it's thought that they also made the journey. Frisian today is one of the closest languages to English. It also doesn't help that our literary sources for this period are very few, non-contemporary (i.e., talking about what happened a few centuries ago), and reliant on state societies talking about non-state societies. Naturally, they use inconsistent terminology for talking about the ethnicity of who is where, and the term "Saxon" appears to be pretty interchangeable for much of northern Germany. The modern term "Anglo-Saxon" thus effectively means "English German," arising largely to distinguish the Saxons who lived in England from those who lived in Germany. Functionally speaking, you can divide the ethnicities of Britain into 5: the original Celtic speakers, the Romanized Celtics who were part of the province of Britannia, the first wave of Germanic immigrants (Anglo-Saxons), the second wave of Germanic immigrants (the Norse), and the third wave of Germanic immigrants (the Normans), this one largely limited to a very small ruling class.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Thanks, that's a great comment! One question, do the Normans count as Germanic? I thought they were from Scandinavia originally and then spent enough time in France to pick up the language?

jhgb 5y ago

> Are not all white people Anglo Saxon? Are not all black people Yoruba? (Well, of course they aren't...)