Alfred the Great was king of Wessex from 871 to 899 AD. He successfully led resistance against Viking invaders in southern England when most of the other kingdoms had fallen. Alfred was the only British king to be given the honorific "The Great." English originated from Proto-Germanic tribes like the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who migrated to Britain in the 5th-6th centuries AD and gradually settled the lands occupied by the native Celtic peoples, influencing English place names. Old English had a complex system of noun cases and strong/weak verb conjugations that has simplified over time.