So the West Saxons subjugated all the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain and formed England (Angle/Engle land). The part that confuses me here is this: if the new rulers of most of southern Britain, the West Saxons of Wessex, managed to form a new nation, why did they call it Angle/Engle land? Why not say, Saxonland or Westseaxnaland? Why name your new united kingdom of England after a different, often rival confederation like the Engles, rather than Saxons like yourselves? If somebody could give me a hand with this that would be great as I’ve been wondering about it for a while now.
To add to the answer that /u/slightly_offtopic has already linked to, and without diverging too much, there is a current school of thought (see Stafford's The Annals of Æthelflæd, Molyneaux's The Foundation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century, etc.) that the narrative of Wessex subjugating all of England to its will is mostly the result of phenomenal PR, and the fact that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is often accepted de facto as a national history instead of as the teleological biography of the Cerdicing royal line.
As early as Keynes' and Dumville's Kings, Currency and Alliances, there's a growing pile of archaeological, numismatic and textual evidence that Mercia remained a powerful and independent ally of Wessex until the 10th Century, when it gradually merged with Wessex into the nascent English kingdom. Although Wessex was the more powerful partner, Cerdicing control over a significant part of 'English' territory, trade and an army which had saved Wessex on at least three occasions was largely dependent on Mercian goodwill fostered through Æthelflæd's extensive political work, and that adopting the (likely already popular) Anglorum officially was probably a political point made to assure the Mercians that their voice would continue to be heard in a kingdom ruled by the West Saxon royal line.
While new answers are always welcome here, it is worth noting that this question has popped up before, see e.g.
u/crusader1089 on Why is England called "England" and not "Saxonland"?
/u/BRIStoneman on the importance of the distinction in In Anglo-Saxon England, would people distinguish between Angles, Saxons and Jutes? When did this distinction disappear?