East Anglia is a region of eastern England. It was named after one of the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the Kingdom of the East Angles, which was in turn named after the homeland of the Angles, Angeln, in northern Germany. The kingdom initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, names which possibly arose during or after the Danish settling ("North folk" and "South folk").

Upon the marriage of the East Anglian princess Etheldreda, the Isle of Ely also became part of the kingdom. The boundaries of the region, however, are vague. It is now generally held to include the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk with Cambridgeshire.

Essex is also often considered part of the modern region. Much of the area is characterised by its flatness, partly consisting of fenland and reclaimed marshland, though much of Suffolk and Norfolk is gently rolling hills. The flatness of the area is noted in Noel Coward's Private Lives - "Very flat, Norfolk" - and the history of its waterways and drainage forms the backdrop to Graham Swift's Waterland.

The principal East Anglian cities include Norwich (the nominal capital), Peterborough and Cambridge. Ipswich, Colchester and Huntingdon are technically towns, although Ely is also a city. The nine Government Office regions, formed in 1994, were adopted in place of the eight standard statistical regions in 1999.

Since then East Anglia is defined as Level 2 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics within the East of England, comprising the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire including Peterborough.

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