Væringi (the singular of
Væringjar) was originally a compound of two words.
Vár means 'pledge' or 'faith' and is the name of the Norse god of oaths. It is cognate with the Anglo-Saxon noun w
ǽr (meaning 'fidelity,' 'protection,' 'agreement,' 'pledge,' 'promise' or 'bond of friendship'
). Gengi means 'companion' and is cognate with the Anglo-Saxon
genga of the same meaning. Thus, the two together mean 'sworn companion' or 'confederate.' According to Danish Slavist Adolf Stender-Petersen, it means 'men who engage in a pursuit in a relationship of mutual responsibility,' but another theory is that it refers to someone who enters into the service or comes under the protection of a new lord by an oath of
fealty. Members of the
Varangian Guard, elite Anglo-Saxon or Norse bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperor, took such an oath. Some scholars, including linguist
Elof Hellquist, assume a derivation from
vár with the suffix
-ing (that is to say, without
gengi). However, the reduction of
gengi to
-ing could parallel that seen in Old Norse
foringi ('leader'), cognate with Anglo-Saxon
foregenga ('forerunner,' 'predecessor,' 'ancestor' or 'attendant').
Walter William Skeat suggested that the name might be the source of the respective names of the English town and county of
Warwick,
Warwickshire, which are documented as having been
Wærincwīc/
Wæringwīc and
Wæringscīr respectively in Anglo-Saxon. or
wering, which mean a 'wall' or '
bank'—with
wering carrying the additional meaning of 'dam' and, hence, '
weir.' The English surnames
Waring, Wareing and
Wearing may be of the same derivation as
Waering. However, Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley, author of
A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, and others assert that
Waring and
Wareing are derived from the
Norman Warin (meaning to 'guard' or 'protect' in
Frankish), Bardsley asserts that the
g was added through a process of
excrescence akin to
Jennin becoming
Jenning. Skeat accused Bardsley of confusing
Wæring with
Warin, pointing out that "both the original vowel and the suffix differ."
Thomas William Shore used the spelling
Waring for the Varangians, calling them a "mixed race," mentioning a possible connection to the Germanic
Warini people, and locating their homeland on the southwest shore of the Baltic Sea. That location also aligns with Vesevolod Merkulov's identification of the Varangians with the Slavic
Wagri people. In any case,
Væringi entered into Medieval Latin as
Varangus and was borrowed into Slavic languages and Greek as a result, respectively, of Varangian rule over Kievan Rus' and their service in the Varangian Guard. The guard was initially exclusively Scandinavian, but exiled Anglo-Saxon mercenaries began to dominate it after the Norman Conquest of England. The Russian
varyag ('a peddler') and the Ukrainian
varjah ('a big strong man') are both derived from
Varangus. == Spelling in other languages ==