A number of recent studies have suggested that the majority of England's ancestry comes from the native British rather than the Germanic settlers. If England (Or the Western and Northern parts of it) were to be recognised as a Celtic nation, I believe this flag should represent it.

I based it on the St Piran's flag and the St David's flag of Cornwall and Wales, as the Brythonic peoples of England are from that same ancestral population. History is full of "Anglo-Saxon" kings with Brythonic names. The red cross is still that of St George's and is retained from the original English flag.

Another part of my reasoning is that some regions who want to be recognised as Celtic nations, such as those in Northern Spain, have no presence of a Celtic language whatsoever, but rather harken back to their heritage. By that logic, all of England is Celtic.

This insistence that every Englishman is an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon brute from across the sea by Celtic nationalists doesn't hold up to scrutiny (And likewise those from English nationalists who insist they are of 100% Anglo-Saxon Germanic blood) – someone from Somerset has more in common with someone from Cornwall or Wales than someone from Kent, let alone Germany.

by TennisNo8774

4 comments

  1. I like the colour scheme. Simple and effective. The union flag would look a bit wonky with this incorporated though.

  2. England: dark mode.

    Looks great and I do find your logic for changing it well made. The only point I’d make, is one you’ve already addressed, but it’s that England is culturally germanic which sets it apart from the rest of the home nations.

  4. This is really bizarre reasoning to be labelled a “Celtic nation”. England is undeniably Germanic/Anglo-Saxon.

    Firstly, studies have not shown we are more “Celtic derived”, it’s a mix. This is the largest, more comprehensive study to date into the ethnic English gene pool:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2

    In the west, sure English people are generally more derived from the Celtic Britons. But to the east, English people can be *substantially* more derived from the Anglo-Saxons than the Celtic Britons. Where do you cut the line?

    I think ancestry is interesting and important, but what do we even mean here?

    What we refer to as Celtic Britons are actually descendants of the Bell Beaker Folk who arrived around 2500BC. They then later adopted or were forced to become culturally and linguistically Celtic.

    If the Bell Beaker derived population became Celtic when they converted to its culture, why didn’t the same population become Anglo-Saxon when they converted to that culture? In many ways we are 100% ethnically Anglo-Saxon because we are the descendants of the English ethnicity which was formed when the Germanics arrived and created a group/s who called themselves Anglo-Saxon.

    This brings me onto my next point: English culture, identity, history, traditions, heritage, and ethnogenesis derives out of the Anglo-Saxon period. Especially ethnogenesis – England literally means Land of the Angles.

    England has virtually no Celtic culture – we are almost entirely Anglo-Saxon culturally (alongside Norman/medieval French).

    I would completely dispute that someone from Somerset traditionally has more in common from someone from Wales than Kent.

    Even Cornwall and Wales have heavy Germanic cultural input (contrary to what a lot of Celtic Nationalists claim). Some of their most famous cultural traditions (eg various May Day traditions) are actually Germanic.

    I’m genuinely failing to see how we aren’t fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon people?

Comments are closed.