Re: Breton, Cornish & French

In article <BMorj.3671$R_4.2780@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Alan Crozier
<name1.name2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > They call themselves Anglo-Saxons in order to distinguish themselves
from
> > the Continental Saxons in Germany.

> I wonder if they really called themselves Anglo-Saxons back in what WE
call
> Anglo-Saxon times. There might have been an occasional learned writer
who
> used this compound term, but I doubt if many ordinary people would have
> identified themselves as such.

I've jumped in part way so this may already have been aired, but:

You seem to assume the validity of some rather dubious history. There is
no
evidence that what we call Anglo-Saxons (ie the people and the language)
are
post-Roman - and plenty of evidence that they are pre-Roman. There is no
evidence that what we call Celts ever lived in SE England - and plenty of
evidence to say that they didn't, and that the 'Anglo-Saxons' of that area
were overwhelmingly the original post-glacial settlers in the area.

What *we* call Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures and people and language is
hopelessly confused with utterly false and fictional 19th and 20th century
mythology. Does it matter whether 1st millennium people used the same
words;
they almost certainly had different understanding of the concept - just as
we
(should) have shrugged off the confused ideas of the 2nd millennium.

-- 
	John