The name Irminones or Hermiones comes from Tacitus's Germania, where he categorized them as one of the tribes descended from Mannus, and noted that they lived in the interior of Germany. Other Germanic groups of tribes were the Ingvaeones, living on the coast, and Istvaeones, who accounted for the rest. Tacitus also mentioned the Suebi as a large grouping who included the Semnones, the Quadi and the Marcomanni, but he did not say precisely to which of the three nations they belonged. Pomponius Mela wrote in his Description of the World in reference to the Kattegat and the waters surrounding the Danish isles : "On the bay are the Cimbri and the Teutoni; farther on, the farthest people of Germania, the Hermiones." Mela then begins to speak of the Scythians. Pliny's Natural History claimed that the Irminones included the Suebi, Hermunduri, Chatti, and Cherusci.
Medieval
In the so-called Frankish Table of Nations, probably a Byzantine creation, the son of Mannus who was the ancestor of the Irminones is named Erminus. He is said to have fathered the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Gepids and Saxons. In a variation on the table that appears in the Historia Brittonum, the Vandals and Saxons have been replaced by the Burgundians and Langobards. They may have differentiated into the tribes Alamanni, Hermunduri, Marcomanni, Quadi, Suebi by the first century AD. By that time the Suebi, Marcomanni and Quadi had moved southwest into the area of modern-day Bavaria and Swabia. In 8 BC, the Marcomanni and Quadi drove the Boii out of Bohemia. The term Suebi is usually applied to all the groups that moved into this area, though later in history the term Alamanni became more commonly applied to the group. Jǫrmun, the Viking Age Norse form of the name , can be found in a number of places in the Poetic Edda as a by-name for Odin. Some aspects of the Irminones' culture and beliefs may be inferred from their relationships with the Roman Empire, from Widukind's confusion over whether Irmin was comparable to Mars or Hermes, and from Snorri Sturluson's allusions, at the beginning of the Prose Edda, to Odin's cult having appeared first in Germany, and then having spread up into the Ingvaeonic North.
