Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm said the term 'Anglo-Saxon' is used by white supremacists and should be banned

The term Anglo-Saxon is 'bound up with white supremacy' and should be replaced with 'early English', academics have argued.

Anglo-Saxon traditionally refers to groups from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands who settled in Britain at the end of Roman rule.

However, early medieval England specialist Mary Rambaran-Olm, an independent scholar and author, claimed the term is used by white supremacists to refer to white British people and should be banned.

The academic – raised in Canada and now based in Ireland – says previous objections to the term Dark Ages sets a precedent.

She told The Times: 'Generally, white supremacists use the term to make some sort of connection to their heritage (which is inaccurate) or to make associations with 'whiteness' but they also habitually misuse it to try and connect themselves to a warrior past.'

A re-enactment by an Anglo-Saxon living history society is pictured above in a stock image. Miss Rambaran-Olm said people in early England – or 'Englelond' – did not call themselves Anglo-Saxons [File photo]

Miss Rambaran-Olm said people in early England – or 'Englelond' – did not call themselves Anglo-Saxons but tended to refer to themselves as 'Englisc' or 'Anglecynn'.

The academic said the term became more popular in the 18th and 19th century and was used to link white people to their 'supposed origins'.

Hitler wrote of the 'Anglo-Saxon determination' to hold India, while imperialist Cecil Rhodes also regularly used the term.

John Overholt, curator of early books and manuscripts at Harvard's Houghton Library, backed a ban on the term.

Re-enactment performers are pictured above next to Clifford's Tower in York. The term Anglo-Saxon is 'bound up with white supremacy' and should be ditched, academics have argued. It should instead be replaced with 'early English', they said [File photo]

'The term Anglo-Saxon is inextricably bound up with pseudohistorical accounts of white supremacy, and gives aid and comfort to contemporary white supremacists,' he wrote on Twitter. 'Scholars of medieval history must abandon it.'

Earlier this year the International Society of Anglo Saxonists took a poll of its 600 members, and 60 per cent of the group agreed to remove the reference to 'Anglo-Saxon' from its name.

But Tom Holland, author of books including Athelstan: The Making of England, said the term was 'inextricably bound up with the claim by Alfred ... to rule as a shared Anglian-Saxon identity'.

'Scholars must be free to use it,' he said.

In a tweet, he wrote of the idea to ditch the term Anglo-Saxon: 'Mad as a bag of ferrets, as they say in Deira [a former kingdom].'