The Early Medieval English did call themselves Anglo-Saxons, but only briefly and in very specific contexts. Both Alfred of Wessex and his son Edward termed themselves Rex Anglorum [et] Saxonum for a brief period in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Most likely, this was aspirational, hoping to reflect their assumed political control over "Anglian" Mercia and, later, East Anglia. By the reign of Æthelstan in the 920s, this awkward portmanteau had often fallen out of use as Æthelstan preferred an even more aspirational Rex Totius Britanniæ - King of All Britain.

A common indentifier was a perceived pan-Englishness. The idea of a unified Anglalond inhabited by a united Anglecynn really arrives with Bede in the Seventh Century. It's also thanks to Bede that we get the idea of separate waves of Angle, Saxon and Jutish colonisation of specific areas, although this is unlikely to have matched real events in the landscape, and indeed those ethno-nationalist identities (Northumbria as Anglian, etc) appear to have coalesced at around this time. Interestingly, the kings of Kent such as the seventh century Hlothhere and Eadric identified themselves as Cantwaras Cyningas, identifying with the ethno-geographic identity of the pre-Roman region (that had likely re-asserted itself), rather than imposing a Germanic or Jutish identity of their own on the area.

West Saxon kings tend to identify as such using an ethno-geographic moniker - Ine is Wesseaxna Kyning and Alfred as Westseaxna Cyning - although their Mercian contemporaries perenially identify as "Mercian" rather than with any "West Anglian" identifiers. Offa, for example, is commonly Rex Merciorum. Even in the 10th century, the notably West Saxon Æthelflæd identifies herself as Procuratrix Merciorum. In the case of Mercia, this "national" rather than ethno-geographic identification may be a result of the particular internal politics of the kingdom: Mercia was, in essence, a 'tribal' hegemony with many constituent sub-kingdoms, from among the leaders of which the "Mercian" king was elected. Rather than a specific "West Saxon" or "East Anglian" identity as in other states, therefore, it is quite likely that a "Mercian" may have otherwise identified as a Hwicce, a Magonsaete, or any other ethnic identity in lieu of their "Mercian" political identity. By contrast, Ine of Wessex (Rex Saxonum) establishes his schola for English pilgrims to Rome as a Schola Saxonum in the eighth century.

In the Ninth Century writings of Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, the English are continually identified as "the Christians", often as opposed to "the Heathens" of the Danish army, but then Asser's Vita Ælfredi is the closest thing to a hagiography written about a non-canonised individual. In other contemporary sources like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however, "English" is the common identifier.