This chief home of the 'ings' was the western part of the district of the 'Agri Decumates' of Tacitus and the northern province of Rhætia, gradually occupied by the Alamannic and Bavarian tribes in the later centuries of Roman rule.
Whether they entered these districts under cover of the Roman peace, or as conquerors to disturb it, the founders of the 'ings' evidently came from German mountains and forests beyond the limes.
North of the limes chiefly in Grapfeld and Thuringia.
North of the Danube names with this suffix extend chiefly through the region of the old Hermunduri into the district of Grapfeld and Thuringia, where they were in the Fulda records six per cent.
This remarkable geographical distribution in Germany suggests important inferences.
They suggest settlements
(1) The attachment of the personal patronymic to the name of a particular locality implies in Germany no less than in Ireland and Wales a permanent settlement in that locality, and so far an abandonment of nomadic habits and even of the frequent redistributions and shifting of residences within the tribal territory.
within Roman provinces,
(2) The occurrence of these patronymic local names most thickly within the Roman limes and near to it, points to the fact that the Roman rule was the outside influence which compelled the abandonment of the semi-nomadic and the adoption of the settled form of life.
possibly manorial.