Wessex, Sussex, Essex and N... N...

Yep, this (image) is what England would have meant before it was England as we know it, in say 800-1150 AD when it was the Anglo Saxons running about being Germanic instead of you lot, running around being English.

Jeez, I sound like a regular pro-fes-sor here, don't I? - notice I made the URL path deliberately vague (uh, if you're actually clicked on the post, not just the home page I mean), to try and deter people who actually have an authority on the matter from stumbling, in disgust, on my musings on their particular area of historical expertise...

So I'm on pretty shaky ground here, in particular because the aforementioned words (Wessex, Sussex, etc.) are conjoinulated from very early English words, but words that, for all intents and purposes, are conjoinulations nonetheless.

You see...
Wessex = West Saxon
Sussex = South Saxon
Essex = (I don't really need to tell you, do I?) East Saxon
OK, so they kinda turned 'sax' into 'sex' and dropped the 'on', but you get the idea.

So, I little history lesson? (again - thanks vague URL path)
The Anglo Saxons lived in the South and East of Britain. Not sure whether they came in and kicked some Celtic ass (though you can pretty much guarantee they did), the squabbles are over whether they totally kicked the Celts asses, or whether they integrated with them somewhat.

Supposedly they cruised in from northern Europe (German/Scandinavianish areas) around 400-600 AD, but this whole 'Wessex' business didn't get off the ground til like, 870ish AD, with good old Alfred the Great (he was the guy that burnt those cakes, right?)

So the Anglo saxons pretty much did their thing until they, in turn, got their asses kicked by the Normans (itself a bit of a conjoinulation - comes from 'Northmen' - they were from Northern France), which I believe happened in 1066.

Ah...have I missed anything... "Hell yes!" I hear you say?
Yeah, well. Check out my tags.