Ingaevones

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The Ingaevones or Ingvaeones (also referred to as "North Sea Germanic people") were a West Germanic cultural group or proto-tribe along the North Sea coast. Their name comes from Tacitus's Germania (circa 98 CE), in which he categorized them as one of the three tribes descended from the three sons of Mannus, son of Tuisto. They probably became distinct from the generality of North Germanic groups between around 1000 and 500 BCE, moving into the areas of Jutland, Holstein, Frisia and the Danish islands, where they had by about 50 BCE become further differentiated into the Frisians, Saxons, Jutes and Angles.

The postulated common language of the Ingvaeones is called Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic.

Pliny c.80 AD in his Natural History (chapter IV, paragraph 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. They are also mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania where he lists the Ingaevones near the ocean as one of three Germanic confederations, the other two being the Hermiones and the Istaevones. According to Rafael von Uslar, this threefold subdivision of the Westgermanic tribes corresponds to archeological evidence from the Late Antiquity.

The legendary father of the Ingaevones/Ingvaeones is named *Ingwaz (Ing, Ingo, or Inguio), son of Mannus. Jacob Grimm, in his Teutonic Mythology, and many others consider this Ing to have been originally identical to the vague 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 gave England its name.

This is also the name given to the Viking era deity Freyr.

In Nennius we find Mannus corrupted to Alanus and Ingio/Inguio, his son, to Neugio. Here the three sons of Neugio are named as Boganus, Vandalus, and Saxo – from whom came the peoples of the Bogari, the Vandals, and the Saxons and Tarincgi.

[edit] References

• (German) Stefan Sonderegger (1979): Grundzüge deutscher Sprachgeschichte. Diachronie des Sprachsystems. Band I: Einführung – Genealogie – Konstanten. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-003570-7