England

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England

Flag Royal Coat of Arms
Motto: Dieu et mon droit  (French)
"God and my right"
Anthem: None officially specific to England; the anthem of the United Kingdom is "God Save the Queen". See also De Facto National anthem of England.


Capital
(and largest city) London
0°7′W / 51.5, -0.117
Official languages English¹
Recognised regional languages Cornish²
Ethnic groups (2006
[1][2]) 90% White
5.3% South Asian
2.7% Black
1.6% Mixed race
0.7% Chinese
0.6% Other
Demonym English
Government Constitutional monarchy
 -  Monarch Queen Elizabeth II
 -  Prime Minister Gordon Brown MP
Legislature Parliament of the United Kingdom
Unified
 -  by Athelstan AD 927 
Area
 -  Total 130,395 km² 
50,346 sq mi 
Population
 -  2007 estimate 51,092,000³ 
 -  2001 census 49,138,831 
 -  Density 392/km² 
1,015/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2006 estimate
 -  Total $1.9 trillion^{[citation needed]} 
 -  Per capita US$38,000^{[citation needed]} 
GDP (nominal) 2006 estimate
 -  Total $2.2 trillion^{[citation needed]} 
 -  Per capita $44,000^{[citation needed]} 
HDI (2006) ▲ 0.940 (high) 
Currency Pound sterling (GBP)
Time zone GMT (UTC0)
 -  Summer (DST) BST (UTC+1)
Internet TLD .uk⁴
Calling code 44
Patron saint St. George
¹ English is established by de facto usage.
² Cornish is officially recognised as a Regional or Minority language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
³ National population projection from the Office for National Statistics.
⁴ Also .eu, as part of the European Union. ISO 3166-1 is GB, but .gb is unused. All these top level domain names are assigned to the United Kingdom as a whole, with no separate allocation to the countries which comprise it.

England /ˈɪŋglənd/ (help·info) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.[3][4][5] Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population,[6] whilst its mainland territory occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain. England shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west and elsewhere is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel. The capital is London, the largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.[7]

England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. It has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world[8] being the place of origin of the English language, the Church of England and English law, which forms the basis of the common law legal systems of many countries around the world. In addition, England was the birth place of the Industrial Revolution and the first country in the world to industrialise.[9] It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.[10] England is the world's oldest parliamentary system[11] and consequently many constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.

The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued as a separate state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union, putting into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulted in political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain.[12] In 1800, Great Britain was united with Ireland through another Act of Union 1800 to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1921, the Irish Free State was created, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act in 1927 officially established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which exists today.

Etymology and usage

See also: British Isles (terminology)

England is named after the Angles, the largest of the Germanic tribes who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries, and who are believed to have originated in the peninsula of Angeln, in what is now Denmark and northern Germany.[13] (The further etymology of this tribe's name remains uncertain, although a popular theory holds that it need be sought no further than the word angle itself, and refers to a fish-hook-shaped region of Holstein.)[14]

The Angles' name has had various spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania,[15] written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in the Ocean".

The early 8th century historian Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to the English people as Angelfolc (in English) or Angli (in Latin).[16]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of "England" referring to the southern part of the island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in 1538.[17]

England is officially defined as "subject to any alteration of boundaries under Part IV of the Local Government Act 1972, the area consisting of the counties established by section 1 of that Act, Greater London and the Isles of Scilly."[18]

History