- Where does the word English come from?
And what does it have to do with fishing hooks?
(upbeat pop rock)
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening.
I'm Julian Northbrook, and this is Doing English.
Do you ever wonder about the origin of words,
that is, their etymology?
I know that I do.
A few months ago I went to Manila
in the Philippines on business
and I found out something very interesting
about the name of their main language, Tagalog
the word Tagalog I was told
comes from the word taga-ilog
which means the people of the river,
so the word Tagalog
as in the language means the language
of the people of the river.
This got me to thinking
where does the word English come from?
You might be tempted to think
that the word English comes from the name
of the country, England
but actually it's just as likely to be the other way around
that they word England
actually comes from the word English,
so that the country is actually the land of the people
who speak English
and indeed, this does seem to be the case.
One theory is that the word English
is actually a corruption of the word Anglish,
meaning the language of the Angles,
the Angles being one of the Germanic, Anglo-Saxon tribes
who came over from around the 5th century,
invaded and colonised Britain.
These Germanic tribes came from the area
that is now North West Germany,
West Denmark and The Netherlands
and supposedly also the story goes,
the Angles were called so
because they came from the fish hook-shaped area
of Schleswig in the Jutland Peninsula.
The word Angle being a derivative
of the Indo-European word Anc meaning to bend
which later entered old English as the word Angle
meaning fish hook
which is of course why we still call fishermen anglers today
and a synonym for the word fishing is angling.
So, there we go, surprising as it may seem,
it could very well be that the word English
originally stems from the word Ang,
the Indo-European word meaning to bend
which later became angle, fishing hook
which was also used to refer to the Angles
who along with other Germanic tribes came to Britain
bringing with them the seeds
of the English language,
regardless of the origins of the word English,
if you are living in the United kingdom,
plan to live in the United Kingdom
or are simply interested in British English
and British culture,
you are definitely going to want
to check out my best-selling
British English/British Culture course, British Stories
because it is way easier
just to show you what the course is all about
rather than explain it to you words.
I'm giving away the first lesson for free.
Just click on the link in the description
or head over to britishstories.com.
So, here's a question for you.
What is the etymology, that is the origin
of the name for your language?
Tell us all about it in the comments.
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and I, your beloved host, Julian Northbrook
will see you same time, same place tomorrow
for the next extraordinary video.
Goodbye.
For more videos related to the history
of the English language,
check out this playlist here
and if you've ever wondered just how many languages
there are in the entire world,
have a look at this video here.