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The name is attested to a monk from Durham and means bee wolf in the Old Northumbrian dialect. [4] The 11th century English Domesday Book contains a recorded instance of the name Beulf. [4] The scholar Gregor Sarrazin suggested that the name Beowulf derived from a mistranslation of Böðvarr with -varr interpreted as vargr meaning "wolf". [5]
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature .
Dæghrefn – a Frankish warrior killed by Beowulf. The Dragon – beast (Old English: wyrm) that ravages Beowulf's kingdom and which Beowulf must slay at the end of the poem. It is the cause of Beowulf's death. Eadgils – a Swedish king also mentioned extensively in the Norse sagas. Eanmund – a Swedish prince, and the brother of Eadgils.
The Wulfings, Wylfings or Ylfings [Note 1] (the name means the "wolf clan") was a powerful clan in Beowulf, Widsith and in the Norse sagas. While the poet of Beowulf does not locate the Wulfings geographically, Scandinavian sources define the Ylfings (the Old Norse form of the name) as the ruling clan of the Eastern Geats. [1]
The name Wealhtheow is unique to Beowulf.Like most Old English names, the name Wealhtheow is transparently recognisable as a compound of two nouns drawn from everyday vocabulary, in this case wealh (which in early Old English meant "Roman, Celtic-speaker" but whose meaning changed during the Old English period to mean "Briton", then "enslaved Briton", and then "slave") and þēow (whose ...
Ecgþēow (pronounced [ˈedʒðeːow]), Edgetho (Proto-Norse *Agiþewaz), or Ecgtheow is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. He is not mentioned outside the Bēowulf manuscript, and it is not known whether he was based on a real person. He belonged to a probably Swedish family (an ätt, see Norse clans) called the Waegmundings.
In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, Unferth or Hunferth is a thegn (a retainer, servant) of the Danish lord Hrothgar. He appears five times in the poem — four times by the name 'Hunferð' (at lines 499, 530, 1165 and 1488) and once by the appellation "the son of Eclafes" (at line 980).
Skjǫldr appears in the prologue of Beowulf, where he is referred to as Scyld Scefing, implying he is a descendant or son of a Scef (‘Sheaf’, usually identified with Sceafa), or, literally, 'of the sheaf'. According to Beowulf he was found in a boat as a child, possibly an orphan, but grew on to become a powerful warrior and king: