As this word is compound (-_varii_=_ware_=_inhabitants_), the root remains _Angr-_, a word which only requires the _r_ to become _l_ in order to make _Angl-_. As both the locality and the relation to the Saxons, make the _Angrivarian_ locality one of the best we could assume for the _Angles_, the only {68} difficulty lies in the change from _r_ to _l_. Unfortunately, this, in the Saxon-German, is an unlikely one. s. 120. The last fact connected with the Angles, will be found in a more expanded form in the Chapter on the Dialects of the English Language. It relates to the distribution over the conquered parts of Britain. Their chief area was the Midland and Eastern counties, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, &c., rather than the parts south of the Thames, which were Saxon, and those north of the Wash, where Danish influences have been considerable. s. 121. The reader has now got a general view of the extent to which the position of the Angles, as a German tribe, is complicated by conflicting statements; statements which connect them with (probably) _High_-German Thuringians, Suevi, and Langobardi, and with (probably) _Slavonic_ Varni, Eudoses, Suardones, &c.; whereas in England, they are scarcely distinguishable from the _Low_-German Saxons. In the present state of our knowledge, the only safe fact seems to be, that of the common relation of both _Angle_ and Saxon, to the present _English_ of England. This brings the two sections within a very close degree of affinity, and makes it probable, that just, as at present, descendants of the Saxons are English (_Angle_) in Britain, so, in the third and fourth centuries, ancestors of the Angles were Saxons in Germany. Why, however, the one name preponderated on the Continent, and the other in England is difficult to ascertain. s. 122. By considering the Angles as Saxons under another name (or _vice vers[^a]_), and by treating the statement as to the existence of Jutes in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as wholly unhistorical, we get, as a general expression for the Anglo-Germanic immigration, that it consisted of the closely allied tribes of the North-Saxon area, an expression that implies a general uniformity of population. Is there reason to think that the uniformity was absolute? s. 123. The following series of facts, when put together, will prepare us for a fresh train of reasoning concerning the different geographical and ethnological relations of the {69} immigrants into England, during their previous habitation in Germany. 1. The termination _-as_ is, like the _-s_ in the modern English, the sign of the plural number in Anglo-Saxon. 2. The termination _-ing_ denotes, _in the first instance_, a certain number of individuals collected together, and united with each other as a clan, tribe, family, household.