AHC: Saxon England

This isn't an AHC to stop the Norman invasion. The challenge is rather, to make England and the English language named after the Saxons rather than the Angles (i.e. Saxeland/Saxony, Saxon etc).

What butterflies would come of this, assuming nothing else is particularly different? How different was Saxon from Aenglish?
 
Difficult really. The Angles were the more numerous of the 2 main tribal confeds that settled the Isles.
The Saxons mainly settled south of the Thames and headed westward; by the time they were able to settle northwards the group that became Mercia was dominating the midlands.

So in order to increase Saxon settlement you need to remove Mercia, have more Saxons come over from the continent, and yet you still won't have the Angles be called Saxons (among themselves). At best you'll probably get the view of 2 grand tribes of the Angles and the Saxons.

Linguistically Saxon dialects in Britain tended to have more breaking of front vowels and more i-umlaut/palatisation effects versus Anglian dialects. Most of the Old English quoted tends to be Late West Saxon owing to the Viking disruptions of North and Eastern Britain.
 
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