The problem we have is that many terms we use today, were not necessarily used by contemporaries themselves, but often used for ease of historical reference by later historians. Certainly the various Germanic peoples who arrived were known to themselves and others by many names, and even three hundred years later, their story was told in terms of tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and others.^(1) However, the short-form of Anglo-Saxon is one used as a short hand to represent all of these peoples and their descendants, as well as the descendants of Brythonnic and Romano-British peoples who were absorbed into the new cultures and kingdoms.

I'll avoid going into too much detail on the nature and history of the arrival and settlement of Germanic peoples into the former Roman-province of Britannia during the 4th and certainly the 5th centuries. However, important to note is many of the small, fragmented kingdoms that arose in the intervening centuries are known to us by the descriptive names for how those people (or at least their rulers) were seen by later chroniclers. Many of these survive to this day even in modern England - East Anglia (the Eastern Angles), Sussex (Suth Seax, or southern Saxons), Essex (East Saxons), Northumbria (Norpanhymbra - the peoples North of the Humber).

By the 9th century, when extensive invasions by 'Danes' began in earnest, four kingdoms remained after centuries of internal conquest, dynastic unions and consolidation - these were Northumbria, Mercia (Merce - the march, or 'border people' for their border with the Welch kingdoms), East Anglia, and Wessex.^(2) However, this state of affairs was at least three centuries after peoples easily identifiable as Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Batavians, Franks, Frisians, et al. had begun to arrive in the island. This process of merger, consolidation, development, and cultural exchange over time gradually led to a more uniform sense of cultural identity, sometimes regionally distinct, but with very broad similarities across the kingdoms and a very similar language with only slight variation in regional dialect. An important part of King Alfred of Wessex's resistance to the Danes was his promotion of the term 'angelcynn' or Angle-kin identity as a rallying point between the Angles in former West Mercia under his rule and his Saxons of Wessex. His son, Edward, titled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, although Alfred's Grandson Æthelstan titled himself 'King of the Angles' after conquering Northumbria from Danish rule.^(3)

Bede, writing in the 8th century century, believed that Anglian culture formed the mainstay of Anglo-Saxon culture. Bede was Northumbrian, and along with Mercia, these two Anglian kingdoms often vied for dominance across the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Certainly, the Welsh writers of the Annales Cambriae identified their enemies (largely in Mercia) as the Anglii (or English).^(4) The Welsh chronicles do use the term Saxorum but these largely appear to be in reference to those from Wessex. So it is unclear if they saw the people of Mercia and Wessex and two distinct peoples (Angles and Saxons) or were using them to identify the two bothersome neighbours (Mercia with a land border, and Wessex across the Severn estuary, with a border into Kernow (Cornwall, likewise populated by the Wealas - a term used by Anglo-Saxons for both Welsh and Cornish). However, Alfred's push for a united identity suggests at least an attempt to politically recognise the similarities and minimise percieved differences between Angles and Saxons. Whether this was differences in culture or dialect, or to deliberately blur the national identities of 'mercian' and 'wessex' subjects in the face of the Danish threat. I would guess it was all three.

So by the time of the conquest of Angle Kingdoms by the House of Wessex in the early 10th century, it is unclear how much the population of England identified as 'Saxon', or 'Angle' with terms with Anglii, or Ænglish being often used. Certainly, the Kings of the House of Wessex styled themselves as 'Kings of the English'. If there were still identifiable tribal differences between Saxon and Angles, although this seems unlikely, then the choice of Ængleland, or England, could also, as some historians have suggested, been a political choice by the new Saxon rulers, as a method of unity with their majority Angle-identifying populations from the former kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia. Otherwise, it could simply have been a reflection of how the population at large saw themselves - culturally and vernacularly one people, with the title inclusive of former national identities which needed to be eroded.

However, after Cnut's conquest of England, and its inclusion in his North Sea Empire covering today's Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden, Cnut styled himself 'King of All English Lands', which was adapted to 'King of England' by all subsequent rulers of England.

1. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation
2. Geoffrey Hindley, A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons, 2006
3. Sarah Foot, 'The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6
4. The Annales Cambriae (Annals of Wales)

Further ReadingGeoffrey Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century, 2015

Note: I use the term 'national' but this isn't a perfect term in this case, but it was as shorthand for 'different kingdoms composed of varied peoples with a similar ethnic descendance'