At a later date, in Britain, the three tribes learned to call themselves collectively by the name of that one among them which earliest rose to supremacy--the English; and the whole southern half of the island came to be known by their name as England.

Even from the first it seems probable that their language was spoken of as English only, and comparatively little as Saxon.

But since it would be inconvenient to use the name of one dominant tribe alone, the English, as equivalent to those of the three, and since it is desirable to have a common title for all the Germanic colonists of Britain, whenever it is necessary to speak of them together, we shall employ the late and, strictly speaking, incorrect form of "Anglo-Saxons" for this purpose.

Similarly, in order to distinguish the earliest pure form of the English language from its later modern form, now largely enriched and altered by the addition of Romance or Latin words and the disuse of native ones, we shall always speak of it, where distinction is necessary, as Anglo-Saxon.

The term is now too deeply rooted in our language to be again uprooted; and it has, besides, the merit of supplying a want.