Anglo-Celtic people are descended primarily from English and Irish, Scottish or Welsh people. [1] The concept is mainly relevant outside of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales particularly in Australia, but is also used in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and South Africa, where a significant diaspora is located.
The term is a combination of the combining form Anglo- and the adjective Celtic. Anglo-, meaning English [2] is derived from the Angles, a Germanic people who settled in Britain (mainly in what is now England) in the middle of the first millennium. The name England (Old English : Engla land or Ængla land) originates from these people. [3] Celtic , [4] in this context, refers to the people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man and Cornwall.
Recorded usage dates as far back to at least the mid-19th century. A newspaper of the name, The Anglo-Celt (pronounced in this case as 'Anglo-Selt'[ citation needed ]), was founded in County Cavan in Ireland in 1846. In an 1869 publication, the term was contrasted with Anglo-Saxon as a more appropriate term for people of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent worldwide:
"Anglo-Saxon," as applied to the modern British people, and Britannic race, I believe every impartial scholar will agree with me in thinking a gross misnomer. For if it can be shown that there is a large Celtic element even in the population of England itself, still more unquestionable is this, not only with regard to the populations the British Isles generally, but also with reference to the English-speaking peoples of America and Australasia. Even the English are rather Anglo-Celts than Anglo-Saxons, and still more certainly is Anglo-Celtic a more accurate term than Anglo-Saxon, not only for that British nationality which includes the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh; but also for that Britannic race, chief elements in the formation of which have been Welsh, Scottish and Irish immigrants. [5]
The term lends itself to the term Anglo-Celtic Isles, an alternative term for the British Isles. [6] Use in this term can be seen in a 1914 Irish unionist ballad:
The United Anglo-Celtic Isles
Will e'er be blessed by Freedoms smiles
No tyrant can our homes subdue
While Britons to the Celts are true.
The false may clamour to betray
The brave will still uphold our sway
The triple-sacred flag as yet
Supreme, its sun shall never set
— Southern Unionist Ballad (Ennis Unionist, 1914)
The Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael.
The Celts or Celtic peoples were a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia, identified by their use of Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. Major Celtic groups included the Gauls; the Celtiberians and Gallaeci of Iberia; the Britons, Picts, and Gaels of Britain and Ireland; the Boii; and the Galatians. The relation between ethnicity, language and culture in the Celtic world is unclear and debated; for example over the ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts. In current scholarship, 'Celt' primarily refers to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single ethnic group.
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to, or descent from England, English culture, the English people or the English language, such as in the term Anglosphere. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British descent in Anglo-America, the Anglophone Caribbean, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, and New Zealand. It is used in Canada to differentiate between French-speaking Canadians (Francophones), located mainly in Quebec but found across Canada, and English-speaking Canadians (Anglophones), also located across Canada, including in Quebec. It is also used in the United States to distinguish the Latino population from the non-Latino white majority.
Anglo-Celtic Australians is an ancestral grouping of Australians whose ancestors originate wholly or partially in the British Isles - predominantly in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as the Isle of Man and Channel Islands.
Anglicisation is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English or place adopts the English language or culture; institutional, in which institutions are influenced by those of England or the United Kingdom; or linguistic, in which a non-English term or name is altered due to the cultural influence of the English language. It can also refer to the influence of English soft power, which includes media, cuisine, popular culture, technology, business practices, laws and political systems.
British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom. It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
The modern Celts are a related group of ethnicities who share similar Celtic languages, cultures and artistic histories, and who live in or descend from one of the regions on the western extremities of Europe populated by the Celts.
Pan-Celticism, also known as Celticism or Celtic nationalism is a political, social and cultural movement advocating solidarity and cooperation between Celtic nations and the modern Celts in Northwestern Europe. Some pan-Celtic organisations advocate the Celtic nations seceding from the United Kingdom and France and forming their own separate federal state together, while others simply advocate very close cooperation between independent sovereign Celtic nations, in the form of Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish, and Welsh nationalism.
The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.
The terminology of the British Isles comprises the words and phrases that are used to describe the geographical and political areas of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the smaller islands which surround them. The terms are often a source of confusion, partly owing to the similarity between some of the actual words used but also because they are often used loosely. Many of the words carry geographical and political connotations which are affected by the history of the islands. The inclusion of Ireland in the geographical definition of British Isles is debated. Ordnance Survey Ireland does not use the term.
The Celtic nations or Celtic countries are a cultural area and collection of geographical regions in Northwestern Europe where the Celtic languages and cultural traits have survived. The term nation is used in its original sense to mean a people who share a common identity and culture and are identified with a traditional territory.
The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.
Scotland was divided into a series of kingdoms in the Early Middle Ages, i.e. between the end of Roman authority in southern and central Britain from around 400 AD and the rise of the kingdom of Alba in 900 AD. Of these, the four most important to emerge were the Picts, the Gaels of Dál Riata, the Britons of Alt Clut, and the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia. After the arrival of the Vikings in the late 8th century, Scandinavian rulers and colonies were established on the islands and along parts of the coasts. In the 9th century, the House of Alpin combined the lands of the Scots and Picts to form a single kingdom which constituted the basis of the Kingdom of Scotland.
The name Britain originates from the Common Brittonic term *Pritanī and is one of the oldest known names for Great Britain, an island off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The terms Briton and British, similarly derived, refer to some or all of its inhabitants and, to varying extents, those of the smaller islands in the vicinity. "British Isles" is the only ancient name for these islands to survive in general usage.
The British diaspora consists of people of English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx and Channel Islands ancestral descent who live outside of the United Kingdom and its Crown Dependencies.
The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common ancestry, history, and culture. The English identity began with the Anglo-Saxons, when they were known as the Angelcynn, meaning race or tribe of the Angles. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who invaded Britain around the 5th century AD.
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.
The Gaels are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languages comprising Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.
The Insular Celts were speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany. The term is mostly used for the Celtic peoples of the isles up until the early Middle Ages, covering the British–Irish Iron Age, Roman Britain and Sub-Roman Britain. They included the Celtic Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.
In addition to English, literature has been written in a wide variety of other languages in Britain, that is the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This includes literature in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Cornish, Anglo-Norman, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Manx, and Irish. Literature in Anglo-Saxon is treated as English literature and literature in Scots as Scottish literature.
Anglo-Celt /aŋɡləʊˈkɛlt/ a person of Irish, Scottish and Welsh or English descent (used chiefly outside these four nations.[ dead link ]
/ˈaŋgləʊ/ combiningForm English: anglophone; of English origin: Anglo-Saxon; English and ...: Anglo-Latin; British and ...: Anglo-Indian Origin: modern Latin, from Latin Anglus 'English'
/kɛlt, sɛlt/ noun a native of any of the modern nations or regions in which Celtic languages are (or were until recently) spoken; a person of Irish, Scottish, Manx, Welsh or Cornish descent.[ dead link ]
One commonly suggested alternative [to the British Isles] is the "Anglo-Celtic Isles". The "Anglo" and "Celtic" parts are usually understood to be separate from each other. This is a hairsplitting distinction. In practice it would be easy to argue that if Ireland, Mann and Great Britain are Anglo-Celtic Isles their peoples must be Anglo-Celts. This is just another way of saying they are British. The obvious answer is to choose a neutral geographical term that can be understood world-wide as referring to these islands. That rules out vague terms like the 'Atlantic Isles' or the 'European Isles'. The 'North Atlantic Isles' sounds like Newfoundland or Greenland to North American ears, and the 'North Europe Isles' excludes Iceland. We are drawn inevitable to the 'West European Isles' as the simple statement of geographical fact. This is why I believe there is no co-incidence that the Irish and the Manx choose it.