Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the invading Germanic tribes in the south and east of Great Britain, from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, to the Norman conquest of 1066.

The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of English history between about 550 AD and the Norman conquest.

The term is also used for the language now called Old English, spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in much of what is now England and some of southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century.

The Benedictine monk, Bede, writing in the early 8th century, identified the English as the descendants of three Germanic tribes: • The Angles, who may have come from Angeln (in modern Germany); Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain, leaving their former land empty.

The name England (Old English: Engla land or Ængla land) originates from this tribe.

• The Saxons, from Lower Saxony (in modern Germany; German: Niedersachsen) and the Low Countries.• The Jutes, possibly from the Jutland peninsula (in modern Denmark; Danish: Jylland).Their language, Old English, derives from "Ingvaeonic" West Germanic dialects and transformed into Middle English from the 11th century.

Old English is divided into four main dialects: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.