Ingaevones

The Ingaevones or Ingvaeones (also referred to as "North Sea Germans") — Ingäwonen, Ingwäonen, Nordsee-Germanen in German — 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 northern dialects of Low German, (Low Saxon, and Dutch), together with English and Frisian, may all be classified as the North Sea Germanic or Ingaevonic languages. Even in the distant past these languages seem to have been a collection of closely related dialects, sharing common innovations and continuously influencing each other, rather than diverging linearly from a common linguistic ancestor — a characteristic of West Germanic languages as a whole.

Other West Germanic proto-tribes were the Irminones and Istaevones.

Pliny in his Natural History (chapter IV, paragraph 99) lists the Ingaevones as one of the five German confederations. According to him they were made up of Cimbri, Teutons, and Chauci.

The legendary father of the Ingaevones/Ingvaeones is named 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.

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.

The element Ing- as encountered in Old English names is usually considered to be related.

The Old English Runic Poem contains these obscure lines:

Ing wæs ærest mid Eástdenum

gesewen secgum, oð he síððan eást

ofer wæg gewát. wæn æfter ran.

þus Heardingas þone hæle nemdon.

Ing was first amidst the East Danes

so seen, until he went eastward

over the sea. His wagon ran after.

Thus the Heardings named that hero.