Gaut, Gauti, Guti, Gothus are name forms based on the same Proto-Germanic root. Gapt is by many considered to be a corruption of Gaut (Gaut→Gavt→Gaft→Gapt, cf. eftir and eptir, "after" in Old Norse). Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, ca 500 BC-50 BC. The area south of Scandinavia is the Jastorf culture Proto-Germanic, the proto-language believed by scholars to be the common ancestor of the Germanic languages, includes among its descendants Dutch, Yiddish... Old Norse or Danish tongue is the Germanic language once spoken by the inhabitants of the Nordic countries (for instance during the Viking Age). ...

The names may represent the eponymous founder of an early tribe, *G(a)utoniz (?), ancestral to the Gautar (Geats), Gutans (Goths) and Gutar (Gotlanders). Gaut was one of Odin's names and the name forms are thought to be echoes of an ancient ancestry tradition among Germanic tribes, such as that of Yngvi and the Ingaevones. Invasion of the Goths: a late 19th century painting by O. Fritsche portrays the Goths as cavalrymen. ... Odin is considered to be the supreme god of late Germanic and Norse mythology. ... The term Germanic tribes applies to the ancient Germanic peoples of Europe. ... Yngvi, Ingui or Ing appears to have been the older name for the god Freyr, which meant lord. In Scandinavian mythology, Yngvi, alternatively Yngve, was the progenitor of the Yngling lineage, a legendary dynasty of Swedish kings from whom the earliest historical Norwegian kings in turn claimed to be descended... Also referred to as Ingaevones, North Sea Germans (Ingwäonen, Nordsee-Germanen in German). ...

Some versions of the English royal line of Wessex add names above that of Woden, purportedly giving Woden's ancestry, though the names are now usually thought be in fact another royal lineage that has been at some stage erroneously pasted onto the top of the standard genealogy. Some of these genealogies end in Geat, whom it is reasonable to think might be Gaut. The account in the Historia Britonum calls Geat a son of a god which fits. But Asser in his Life of Alfred writes instead that the pagans worshipped this Geat himself for a long time as a god. In Old Norse texts Gaut is itself a very common byname for Odin. The Historia Britonum, or The History of the Britons, is a historical work that was first written sometime shortly after AD 820, and exists in several recensions of varying difference. ... Asser (d. ...

Jordanes in The origin and deeds of the Goths traces the line of the Amelungs up to Hulmul son of Gapt, purportedly the first Gothic hero of record. This Gapt is felt by many commentators to be an error for Gaut or Gauti. The Origin and Deeds of the Goths (Latin: De origine actibusque Getarum), commonly referred to as Getica, was written by Jordanes, probably in Constantinople, and was published in AD 551. ...

The Gutasaga, which treats the history of Gotland before its Christianization, begins with Tielvar and his son Havde, who had three sons, Graip, Guti and Gunfjaun, who were the ancestors of the Gotlanders, the Gutar (which is originally the same name as Goths). The Gutasaga was recorded in the 13th century and survives in only a single manuscript, the Codex Holm. ... Gotland is the largest island in the Baltic Sea. ... St Francis Xavier converting the Paravas: a 19th-century image of the docile heathen The historical phenomenon of Christianization, the conversion of individuals to Christianity or the conversion of entire peoples at once (a political shift as much as a spontaneous mass shift in individual consciences), also includes the practice... The Gotlanders are the population of the island of Gotland. ...