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A name. A world of connections.
A given name in Danish
No sourced pronunciation yet
01 / Meaning & origin
Hrolf is a given name.
No etymology is recorded in our sources for this spelling yet. The record exists because the name is documented in use; a meaning will be shown only once a cited source supports it.
02 / Across borders
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countries in our sources
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0 countries with published statistics. Language records show cultural connections; they do not measure how common a name is.
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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.
Hrolf— “wolf of fame”
Hrothgar was also a famed name among the Angles. It appears in Beowulf, as the chief of the Scyldings, the son of Healfdane. There, too, are found Hrothmund and Hrothwulf; and the northern names of Hroar and Hrolfr are contractions of these, though the characters they belong to are not the same as those in Beowulf. Hrolf Krake was the subject of a northern Saga; and the father of our Norman kings, whom we are wont to call by his Latinism of Rollo, formed from the French…
Hrothgar was also a famed name among the Angles. It appears in Beowulf, as the chief of the Scyldings, the son of Healfdane. There, too, are found Hrothmund and Hrothwulf; and the northern names of Hroar and Hrolfr are contractions of these, though the characters they belong to are not the same as those in Beowulf. Hrolf Krake was the subject of a northern Saga; and the father of our Norman kings, whom we are wont to call by his Latinism of Rollo, formed from the French stammer of Rou, was in fact Hrolf Gangr, or at full length, Hrothulf, Fame-Wolf. A name of fame and terror it was, when the mighty man, too weighty for steed to carry him, was expelled from his own land, and fought for a home, not for plunder, among the fertile orchards of Neustria, when his followers' rude homage overthrew the degenerate Karling, and ‘the grisly old proselyte,’ in his baptism, assumed, without perhaps knowing of the similarity, the French Robert. This change prevented his original name from being very prevalent among the Normans; and the German form, Rudolf, is chiefly from a sainted Karling prince, who was bishop of Bourges, and from whom Rudolf of Hapsburg must have derived it.…
Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter V (The Karling Romances), Section III (Roland, &c) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
A little story to keep
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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.
