Ælfwine

Ælfwine (also Aelfwine, Elfwine) is an Old English personal name. It is composed of the elements ælf "elf" and wine "friend", continuing a hypothetical Common Germanic given name *- which is also continued in Old High German and Lombardic as Albewin, Alpwin, Albuin, Alboin. Old Norse forms of the name are Alfvin and Ǫlfun.

The name is often interpreted as "elf-friend", a translation notably made use of by J.R.R. Tolkien in his legendarium, where an Ælfwine is a character who "befriended the elves", but both the ælf and the wine element are frequent elements in Germanic anthroponymy, and these elements have in historical practice be combined without a compound meaning.

The modern names Alwin, Alvin may be a reduction of this name, or alternatively of Adalwin, the Old High German cognate of the Anglo-Saxon Æthelwine.

The name of the elves is clearly of Common Germanic age. As an element in given names, it is not found in the earliest period, but it is well attested from the 6th century.

The name is first attested as that of Alboin (r. 560–572), king of the Lombards. In Anglo-Saxon England, it first occurs with the child-king Ælfwine of Deira (c. 661 - 679). The Old High German name is found in the 8th and 9th centuries in the forms Alfwin, Alfwini, Albuwin, Albuvin, Albewin, Albuin, Alpwin, in the 11th century also as Elbewin. The forms in alf are strictly speaking Low German, the forms in alb High German. The Old English ælf, elf are a result of the i-mutation in North Sea Germanic.

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