Knut
male given name
Knut (Norwegian and Swedish), Knud (Danish), or Knútur (Icelandic) is a Scandinavian and German first name, of which the anglicised form is Canute. In Germany both "Knut" and "Knud" are used. In Spanish and Portuguese Canuto is used which comes from the Latin version Canutus, and in Finland, the name Nuutti is based on the name Knut. The name is derived from the Old Norse Knútr meaning "knot". In English the K is not mute, so the name is not properly pronounced nut or nute.
It is the name of several medieval kings of Denmark, two of whom also reigned over England during the first half of the 11th century.
People
Harthaknut I of Denmark (Knut I, Danish: Hardeknud) (b. c. 890), king of Denmark
Knut the Great (Knut II, Danish: Knud den Store or Knud II) (d. 1035), Viking king of England, Denmark and Norway
Subject of the apocryphal King Canute and the waves
Harthaknut (Knut III, Danish: Hardeknud or Knud III) (d.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Knut” as male given name. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as male given name. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q943881. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1035.
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This entry incorporates text from “Knut” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.