Tacitus wrote that Mannus was the son of
Tuisto and the progenitor of the three Germanic tribes
Ingaevones,
Herminones and
Istvaeones.[2] In discussing the German tribes Tacitus wrote:
In ancient lays, their only type of historical tradition, they celebrate Tuisto, a god brought forth from the earth. They attribute to him a son, Mannus, the source and founder of their people, and to Mannus three sons, from whose names those nearest the Ocean are called Ingvaeones, those in the middle Herminones, and the rest Istvaeones. Some people, inasmuch as antiquity gives free rein to speculation, maintain that there were more sons born from the god and hence more tribal designations—Marsi,
Gambrivii, Suebi, and Vandilii—and that those names are genuine and ancient. (Germania, chapter 2)[3]
The Latinized name Mannus is evidently of some relation to Proto-Germanic *mannaz, "man".[6]
Mannus again became popular in literature in the 16th century, after works published by
Annius de Viterbo[7] and
Johannes Aventinus[8] purported to list him as a primeval king over Germany and Sarmatia.[9]
In the 19th century, F. Nork wrote that the names of the three sons of Mannus can be extrapolated as Ingui, Irmin, and Istaev or Iscio.[10] A few scholars like
Ralph T. H. Griffith have expressed a connection between Mannus and the names of other ancient founder-kings, such as
Minos of Greek mythology, and
Manu of Hindu tradition.[11]
^The Phonology/paraphonology Interface and the Sounds of German Across Time, p.64, Irmengard Rauch, Peter Lang, 2008
^Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West, p. 40,
Greg Woolf, John Wiley & Sons, 01-Dec-2010
^"Word and Power in Mediaeval Bulgaria", p. 167. By Ivan Biliarsky, Brill, 2011
^Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations, p. 87, by Georges Dumézil, Zone, 1988. The question remains whether one can phonetically link this Latin mani- "(dead) man" the *manu- which, apart from the Sanskrit Manu (both the name and the common noun for "man"), has given, in particular, the Germanic Mannus (-nn- from *-nw- regularly), mythical ancestor of the Germans (...), the Gothic manna "man" ... and the Slavic monžǐ."
^Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume I: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493-1648, p.110, Joachim Whaley, Oxford University Press, 2012
^Historian in an age of crisis: the life and work of Johannes Aventinus, 1477-1534, p. 121 Gerald Strauss, Harvard University Press, 1963
^William J. Jones, 1999, "Perceptions in the Place of German in the Family of Languages" in Images of Language: Six Essays on German Attitudes, p9 ff.
^Populäre Mythologie, oder Götterlehre aller Völker, p. 112, F. Nork, Scheible, Rieger & Sattler (1845)
^"A Classical Dictionary of India: Illustrative of the Mythology, Philosophy, Literature, Antiquities, Arts, Manners, Customs &c. of the Hindus", p. 383, by John Garrett, Higginbotham and Company (1873)