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> About 5000 years ago, people started cutting down forests to use the land for agricultural use. The literal meaning of "England" in norse languages is someth
by yobbo 5y ago
> About 5000 years ago, people started cutting down forests to use the land for agricultural use.
The literal meaning of "England" in norse languages is something like "meadow land".
- kwhitefoot 5y agoNot really. It is named after the Angles. See https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/e/England.htm https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/e/Englan... The fact that English 'meadow' is 'eng' in modern Norwegian is misleading.
- bencollier49 5y agoDo the Norse call it England then? I think he means they use a different name which means "Meadow Land".
- kwhitefoot 5y agoEng land in modern Norwegian would mean literally meadow country because eng = meadow and land = country. But England derives from Angle land, the land of the Angles.
- yobbo 5y agoThis might also be true, but to speakers of norse languages (predecessors and old dialects of norwegian/swedish/danish/old english), the literal meaning of the word is still "meadow land" - among other names such as "ice land", "green land", "north land", "small land", and so on. Yes, places were also named based on the tribes living there ("goth land" or "scot land" for example), but people living in a region were named by that region, like how we say "the icelandic people" today. "English" people living in "england" is consistent with both perspectives. (Other place names like Zealand in denmark also have undetermined origins, but regardless of origin the literal meaning has been close to "sea land" for many speakers in the region.)