Anglo-Saxon and Danish Period
The French form replaced Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond).
The Latin term (Bede as Brittania) is loaned into Old English by Alfred the Great as bryttania. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum gives an origin myth involving Brutus of Troy.
Read more about this topic: Britain (placename)
Famous quotes containing the words anglo-saxon and/or period:
“The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Words convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow; and laden with this, their precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered shipwreck and the languages of common life have sunk into oblivion.”
—Anonymous. Quoted in Richard Chevenix Trench, On the Study of Words, lecture 1 (1858)