According to the NED, the English noun runt is of obscure etymology. The editors rightly reject the connection with Middle Dutch runt ‘ox’ upheld (among others) by Weekley, but they offer nothing in its stead. H. Falk, in his Altnordische Waffenkunde 52, connects runt with Icelandic hrotti, a word which he defines as langer Mensch (longurio)'. In S. Blöndal's Islandsk-Dansk Ordbog the word hrotti is defined in Icelandic: ‘stór, klunnalega vaxinn maÐur (big, heavy, clumsy man)'; and in Danish: 'höj Mand af plump Vækst (tall, fat man)'. The derogatory sense 'coarse, rude fellow’ is recorded in Cleasby-Vigfússon's Icelandic-English Dict.; similarly in Blöndal and in Fritzner. In his Eigennamen im Beowulf 75, E. Björkman adds Danish runte, a form in which the sound-change nt > tt did not take place. In the Dansk Ordbog published under the auspices of Videnskabernes Selskab, runte is defined as 'en lang Stage, tyk ved den nederste Ende, til at springe over en Grøft med (a long pole, thick at the lower end, for use in jumping over a ditch)'. An Icelandic form without assimilation also occurs, though neither Falk nor Björkman mentions it. This form is hrunki, which Fritzner glosses ‘stor Person (big person)', while in Cleasby-Vigfússon only the derogatory senses 'clown, brute’ are recorded. According to Falk, runt and hrotti may go back to a stem *hrungt- (base hrung plus t-suffix); the base is cognate with OE hrung ‘rung, staff, rod, beam, pole,’ the modern rung (of a ladder or chair). I analyze hrunki as made up of this same base hrung plus k-suffix. The two words hrotti and hrunki obviously agree in meaning, whether used with or without derogation. They also agree in that they may be used as proper names. Hrunki is on record as a nickname, and Hrotti is on record as a sword-name: it occurs in the Elder Edda and the Völsungasaga as the name of Fáfnir's sword. Since the Scandinavians had a way of making a man's nickname do duty also as the name of his sword, the existence of the sword-name Hrotti indicates that Fáfnir had a nickname Hrotti, even though this nickname is not recorded as such. A nickname Hrotti would be eminently suitable for Fáfnir, who was by far the biggest and grimmest of the sons of HreiÐmarr and, when he exercised his powers as a shape-shifter, took the form of a huge dragon. To the sword-name Hrotti answers the sword-name Hrunting recorded in the OE poem Beowulf. This name shows the -ing-suffix regular in English (as distinguished from Scandinavian) sword-names. The sword in question presumably got its name from an owner nicknamed Hrunta. In other words, hrunta is the OE cognate of Icelandic hrotti, and the modern English runt can be traced back to OE times. Yet another Scandinavian proper name belongs here: the mythological name Hrungnir is obviously made up of a base hrung plus n-suffix, and since this name is that of a giant it goes well with the meaning ‘big person, tall man’ recorded for hrunki and hrotti. No Scandinavian form without a suffix occurs. Forms in other Germanic dialects without suffix, besides the OE hrung mentioned above, are Gothic hrugga ‘rod, staff’ and German runge.