distinguish the Germanic inhabitants of Britain from continental Saxons (referred to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Ealdseaxe, 'old Saxons'), but both the Saxons of Britain and those of Old Saxony (Northern Germany) continued to be referred to as 'Saxons' in an indiscriminate manner, especially in the languages of Britain and Ireland. Although the English Saxons were no longer raiders, the political history of the continental Saxons is unclear until the time of the conflict between their semi-legendary hero Widukind and the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. The continental Saxons are no longer a distinctive ethnic group or country but their name lives on in the names of several regions and states of Germany, including Lower Saxony (which includes central parts of the original Saxon homeland known as Old Saxony), Saxony in Upper Saxony, as well as Saxony-Anhalt (which includes Old, Lower and Upper Saxon regions). Etymology The name of the Saxons may derive from a kind of knife associated with the ethnos; such a knife has the name seax in Old English, Sax in German, sachs in Old High German, and sax in Old Norse. The seax has had a lasting symbolic impact in the English counties of Essex and Middlesex, both of which feature three seaxes in their ceremonial emblem. The names of these counties, along with the names "Sussex" and "Wessex", contain a remnant of the root of the word "Saxon". The Elizabethan-era play Edmund Ironside suggests that the name "Saxon" derives from the Latin saxa (stones; singular form: saxum): Saxon as a demonym Celtic languages In the Celtic languages, the words designating English nationality derive from the Latin word . The most prominent example, a loanword in English from Scottish Gaelic (older spelling: ), is the word , used by Scots-, Scottish English- and Gaelic-speakers in the 21st century as a racially pejorative term for an English person. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives 1771 as the date of the earliest written use of the word in English. The Gaelic name for England is (older spelling: , genitive: ), and (formed with a common adjective suffix ) means "English" in reference to people and things, though not when naming the English language, which is . , the Irish word for an Englishman (with meaning England), has the same derivation, as do the words used in Welsh to describe the English people (, singular ) and the language and things