England

Land of the Angles, birthplace of football and the Industrial Revolution.

England is one of the countries that makes up the United Kingdom. It sits on the island of Great Britain, covering roughly 62% of it, along with over 100 smaller nearby islands. To the north, it shares a land border with Scotland; to the west, it borders Wales. It is surrounded by the North Sea on the east, the English Channel on the south, the Celtic Sea to the southwest, and the Irish Sea to the west. Continental Europe is to the southeast, and Ireland lies to the west. According to the 2021 census, England’s population was 56,490,048, with its largest city, London, home to nine million people.

Last updated 2026-10-03 from the source article.

Quick Facts

Capital

London

Languages

English, BSL

Ethnic groups

81.0% White
9.6% Asian
4.2% Black
3.0% Mixed
2.2% other

Ethnic groups year

2021

Legal jurisdiction

England and Wales

Monarch

Charles III

Facts from the source article.

Background

The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic. It takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had extensive cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The Kingdom of England, which included Wales after 1535, ceased to be a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union brought into effect a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland, forming the Kingdom of Great Britain.

England is the origin of the English language, the English legal system, association football, and the Anglican branch of Christianity; its parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England is home to the two oldest universities in the English-speaking world: the University of Oxford, founded in 1096, and the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209.

Did You Know?

The name 'England' is derived from the Old English name Englaland, meaning 'land of the Angles'.
The earliest recorded use of the term 'Engla londe' is in the late-9th-century translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, using the Latin word Anglii.
A romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend.
Albion is applied to England in a more poetic capacity, though its original meaning is the island of Britain as a whole.