The Ingaevones or Ingvaeones, as described in Tacitus's Germania, written ca AD 98, were a West Germanic cultural group living along the North Sea coast in the areas of Jutland, Holstein, Frisia and the Danish islands, where they had by the first century BC become further differentiated to a foreigner's eye into the Frisians, Saxons, Jutes and Angles. The postulated common group of closely related dialects of the Ingvaeones is called Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic. Tacitus' source categorized the Ingaevones near the ocean as one of the three tribes descended from the three sons of Mannus, son of Tuisto, progenitor of all the Germanic peoples. The other two being the Hermiones and the Istaevones. According to Rafael von Uslar, this threefold subdivision of the West Germanic tribes corresponds to archeological evidence from Late Antiquity. Pliny ca AD 80 in his Natural History (IV.99) lists the Ingvaeones as one of the five Germanic confederations, the others being the Vandili, the Istvaeones, the Hermiones and another group he does not name. According to him, the Ingvaeones were made up of Cimbri, Teutons, and Chauci. The legendary father of the Ingaevones/Ingvaeones is named *Ingwaz (Ing, Ingo, or Inguio), son of Mannus. This is also the name applied to the Viking era deity Freyr. Jacob Grimm, in his Teutonic Mythology considers this Ing to have been originally identical to the obscure Scandinavian Yngvi, eponymous ancestor of the Swedish royal house of the Ynglings. An Ingui is also listed in the Anglo-Saxon royal house of Bernicia. Since the Ingaevones form the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, they were speculated by Noah Webster to have given England its name.[1] In the Historia Brittonum Mannus becomes corrupted to "Alanus"[2] and Ingio/Inguio, his son, to Neugio. Here the three sons of Neugio are named Boganus, Vandalus, and Saxo – from whom, according to "Nennius" came the peoples of the Bogari, the Vandals, and the Saxons and Tarincgi.
Notes
References
- Grimm, Jacob (1835). Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology); From English released version Grimm's Teutonic Mythology (1888); Available online by Northvegr © 2004-2007:Chapter 15, page 2-; 3. File retrieved 09-26-2007.
- (German) Sonderegger, Stefan (1979): Grundzüge deutscher Sprachgeschichte. Diachronie des Sprachsystems. Band I: Einführung – Genealogie – Konstanten. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-003570-7
- Tacitus. Germania (1st Century AD). (in Latin)
