Many scholars accept the belief that the Angles were named after land that was shaped like a fishhook. One source identifies the province of Holstein as looking a little like a fishhook (but it doesn't!) and another conjectures that the northern tip of Denmark looks like one (but only slightly). Yet another authority has our ancestors named after the angular corner of southeast England because that was one of the first places that they settled in Britain. But none of this is very convincing.
Another origin seems more plausible. For thousands of years our ancestors used barbed spears, arrows and harpoons for hunting everything from elk to pike. The harpoons on the left were found within Anglian territory in Denmark. It was just a matter of time before they modified the barbed hunting tool to create the harpoon-like weapon shown on the right. It was called the angon (Old High German ango). Many of them have been found in precisely those areas settled by the Angles, and were buried not long before their migration to Britain. There were a number of reasons for the long iron sleeve. Used as a javelin, the extra iron would add weight ensuring that the angon would bury itself in an enemy shield up to the barbs. This made it impossible to remove. The shield would then become too heavy to hold upright. If the enemy soldier tried to cut the barbed head off, he would only hack away in vain at the iron shaft. He would have no choice but to drop his shield and fight unprotected. Of course, if the angon hit its primary target, pulling it out would only make death come more quickly, and more painful. The angon was not identical to the Roman pilum, nor was it derived from the Celts. It originated with the Angles.
The Old English word angel or angul, akin to Old High German ango, and Old Norse ongull, can be traced back to the Latin uncus, and then to the Greek onkos, which means arrow-barb.
Incidentally, the Franks were named from their national weapon, the frankon. Frankon is a prehistoric name of Teutonic origin meaning "javelin".* The Saxons of course were thought to be named after the long-knife known as the seax. Strangely enough, no seaxes have been found in England that date to the 400s. This is the century that most of the 'Saxons' were said to have settled in England, yet none have been found in this time period! The seax was not introduced into the country until the 500s and only became popular in the 600s.
The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe tells us that: "The objects consigned to the peatbogs are an invaluable source of information on the weapons and war gear used by the northern peoples......the main weapon for fighting at a distance remained the javelin, often the barbed ango." These peatbogs were located within the homelands of the Angles.
In The Northern Barbarians, Malcolm Todd writes: "Another significant feature of armament in the last two centuries B.C. is the increased importance of the javelin. Javelin-heads with barbs now frequently occur in graves, in some areas commonly in pairs. This change too seems likely to have been a purely northern innovation and not a borrowing from the Celts."
* Material collected from the Philological Society tells us that the Franks were named after the Francon. It was only later called the franca or franco. From the 12 volume set of The Oxford English Dictionary, (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, first published in 1933 and reprinted in 1961 and 1970).
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