Loading your next page…
A name. A world of connections.
Old Norse roots
/kəˈn(j)uːt/ · English
01 / Meaning & origin
Canute is a masculine given name documented in English. English Wiktionary traces it to Old Norse Knútr via Middle English and Anglo-Norman.
Inherited from Middle English Canut, from Anglo-Norman *Canut, Kenut (compare Medieval Latin Canūtus), from Old Norse Knútr, possibly originally a byname meaning "knot".
02 / Across borders
Explore published naming statistics and documented language connections around the world.
The name atlas
10
countries in our sources
Select a country to follow Canute’s connections around the world.
0 countries with published statistics. Language records show cultural connections; they do not measure how common a name is.
Selected country
Language records
Documented as a given name in English.
Explore United States4 of 10 countries
03 / By the numbers
Follow the spelling through the years, one published dataset at a time.
No official statistics are imported for this spelling. No statistical dataset covering this spelling has been imported yet. See data coverage.
04 / Through time
Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.
Canute— “hill”
Knud, or Knut, a very common northern name, is a very puzzling one. Its origin and nationality are Danish, and it only came to Norway by intermarriages, nor does it appear at all in the _Landnamabok_. The great Dane who brought it here is called by the chroniclers Canutus, from some notion of making it the Latin _hoary_, and thus we know him as Canute; but even in Domesday, one landholder in Yorkshire, and another in Derbyshire, are entered as Cnud. The whole North, and the…
Knud, or Knut, a very common northern name, is a very puzzling one. Its origin and nationality are Danish, and it only came to Norway by intermarriages, nor does it appear at all in the _Landnamabok_. The great Dane who brought it here is called by the chroniclers Canutus, from some notion of making it the Latin _hoary_, and thus we know him as Canute; but even in Domesday, one landholder in Yorkshire, and another in Derbyshire, are entered as Cnud. The whole North, and the inhabitants of the Hebrides, use the name, which comes from the same root as our _knot_, and properly means a protuberance, a hill, or barrow.
Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter VI (Descriptive Names), Section IX (Locality) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
A little story to keep
Take the story of Canute with you. Create a personal name passport with its meaning, roots and connections.
06 / Behind the facts
Review status: Source-reported — no editorial review recorded yet. Last data change 2026-10-15.
Wiktionary text: CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata: CC0. Commons recordings retain their individual file licences. Complete attribution is available in each group above and alongside each chart.
