Hereward

The name Hereward, a rare forename in modern Britain, is an Anglo-Saxon personal name, built (as is common) from two elements: here 'army' and weard 'guard'. The latter is the more modern English ward. The name is pronounced with three syllables: 'HERR-uh-word', IPA: /ˈhɛr ə (or ɪ) wə^rd/.

The name is always associated with Hereward the Wake, a legendary figure from English history. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, he led Anglo-Saxon resistance to the new rulers in the fens around the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire - then an undrained swampland. Though he appears to have existed, very little is known with certainty, although he was involved in a rising around Ely in 1070. He is the subject of what was once a highly regarded historical novel, Hereward the Wake: last of the English, by Charles Kingsley (1866), and has been the subject of many others since.

The nickname, or title, 'The Wake', is first recorded three centuries after he lived. It may mean simply 'the watchful', 'the awake'; but it was used to bolster the claims of a family called Wake to some of his lands and other inheritance.