Tancred Explained
Tancred or Tankred is a masculine given name of Germanic origin that comes from thank- (thought) and -rath (counsel), meaning "well-thought advice". It was used in the High Middle Ages mainly by the Normans (see French Tancrède) and especially associated with the Hauteville family in Italy.[1] It is rare today as a first name, but still common as a Norman surname: Tanqueray, Tanquerey, Tanqueret. Its Italian form is Tancredi and in Latin it is Tancredus. Its Italian patronymic is also Tancredi.
People with the given name
In chronological order:
- Tancred, Torthred, and Tova (died 869 or 870), Anglo-Saxon siblings who were saints, hermits and martyrs
- Tancred of Hauteville (c. 980–1041), minor Norman lord, founder of the Hauteville family
- Tancred, Prince of Galilee (1075–1112), a leader of the First Crusade
- Tancred, Count of Syracuse
- Tancred of Conversano, Count of Brindisi; banished 1133
- Tancred, Prince of Bari (c. 1119–between 1138 and 1140), son of Roger II of Sicily, and Prince of Taranto from 1132 to 1138
- Tancred of Sicily (1138–1194), King of Sicily
- Tancred Tancredi (1185–1241), also called Trancred of Siena, Dominican friar
- Tancred of Bologna (c. 1185–1230/1236), Dominican canonist
- Tancred Robinson (c.1658–1748), English physician
- Tancrède Auguste (1856–1913), 20th President of Haiti from August 8, 1912 until his death in office on May 2, 1913
- Tancred Ibsen (1893–1978), Norwegian officer, pilot, film director and screenwriter
- Tankred Dorst (1925–2017), German writer
Fictional characters
- Tancred of Salerno, in Boccaccio's Decameron novella collection
- Tancred, in the Italian epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata (1581) by Torquato Tasso
- Tancred, in the 1591 English play Tancred and Gismund
- Tancred, Lord Montacute, title character of Benjamin Disraeli's 1847 novel Tancred
- Tancred Torsson, in Jenny Nimmo's Children of the Red King series
- Tancred, in the computer game Diablo 2
- Tancred, in the video game Summoner, known as the "King of Fleas"
- Sir Tancred Beauleigh, the father of the title character in Edgar Jepson's Tinker stories
- Tandredi Recchi, the family patriarch in the Luca Guadagnino 2009 film I Am Love
- Father Tancred, a minor character in the 2010 film Robin Hood
- Tancred Cappelen-Jensen, in Bernhard Borge's novel "Døde menn går i land"
- Sara Tancredi, one of the protagonists in the American crime drama television show Prison Break
Band
See also
Notes and References
- Alfonso Burgio, Dizionario dei nomi propri di persona (Rome: Hermes Edizioni, 1992), p. 327.
