Origin of the word “Angling”:

Thought you guys might be interested in something I compiled from the internet. Contains a little Old English (which gives it “charm”) and sets its roots as an Anglo-Saxon word.  -DanStag

angel is from Greek αγγελος (angelos) the translation of Hebrew מַלְאַךְ (mal’akh) ‘messenger’. The word for fishhook, which occurs in other languages (e.g., Old High German ango, angul ‘fishhook, spine, barb’, Old Irish �cath ‘fishhook’) is from *ank- ‘to bend, curve’ (IEW pp.45f.), and which is related to Latin angulus ‘angle, corner, nook’, Greek αγκυλος (ankulos) ‘bent’, αγκυρα (ankura) ‘anchor’.

Angler was originally a last name, and came to mean “fisherman” by about 1500, from the verb angle, “fish with a hook,” from the Old English angel, which means “angle,” but also “fishhook.”

Fishing, when done with a rod rather than a net is called “angeln” in german

The noun “angle” was derived from an Indo-European root “ank” meaning “to bend”. The word “angle” entered the language in the Old English period as “angel”, and was based on Germanic angg- (source also of German angel ‘fishing tackle’) and was used to mean “hook for fishing”. It was spelled “angel” in Old English, but it is unrelated to the Biblical sort of “angel” (which is based on a Greek word for “messenger”). “Angle” was also was often used to refer to the rod and line as well as the hook and was in use as such until the 19th century.
The verb “angle” has been used to mean “to fish” since the late 15th century, and “angler” as meaning “one who fishes with a hook and line” has been in use since the mid-16th century.
“Ank” also is the base of the Greek “ankos” (a bend) and the English words “ankle” and “anchor.”
An earlier form of the word appears to have been applied to a fishhook-shaped penninsula area of Schleswig within in the larger Jutland** peninsula by its former inhabitants. Calling their homeland Angul, they came to be referred to as Angles. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Angles (Germanic peoples also referred to as the Anglo-Saxons) emigrated westward to a new island land. Both the island “country’s name, England, and the language, English, now enshrine a reminiscence of the Angles fishhooks. The ancient homeland area of the Angles encompasses the present-day Angeln (sometimes called Anglia) in the northern Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
The “Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle” (or – Treatise of Fishing with a Hook/Hook and Line) was published as part of the second edition of “The Boke of St. Albans” in 1496. The “Treatyse” is the most complete early reference work on fly fishing… and it’s thought to have been written by Dame Juliana Berners – a nun and noblewoman. Various accounts in literature describe her as a woman of keen intellect and an accomplished practitioner and avid devotee of outdoor sports, including angling and hunting. The text includes instructions on how to make a rod, line, hooks, instructions for twelve fly patterns and the season of their optimum utility, and hints about how to catch the common varieties of British fish, and includes substantial information on fishing destinations and bait selection. Perhaps most remarkable are the essays on the virtues of conservation, respecting the rights of streamside landowners, and angler’s etiquette. These concepts would not come to be commonly accepted and advocated in the angling world until 400 years after the publication of the “Treatyse”, yet today they embody the ethical bedrock of sport fishing. The “Treatyse” predates Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler” (1653) by about 150 years. “The Compleat Angler” is arguably rated as the third most publ
ished book written in English, with Shakespeare’s works and the Bible being the other two.
[**Jutland is a large peninsula that contains the mainland regions of Denmark. It separates the North and Baltic seas, and borders Germany to the south.]
Condensed from Source: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/14512/why-are-fishermenwomen-referred-to-as-anglers