Gunderic

Gunderic is a masculine given name of Germanic origin, used in late antiquity and the early medieval period. In Latinized form it appears as Gundericus, with spellings such as Gundarik, Gundaric, or Guntheric. The name derives from Germanic elements meaning “battle” (gund) and “ruler” or “king” (rīks), and it appears in various Gothic and Vandal contexts.

Notable bearer: the best-attested Gunderic is a king of the Vandals and Alans (often described as the Hasdingi Vandals) who appears in late antique sources as part of the royal lineage that precedes Genseric (Gaiseric). Details of his reign are unclear and dates vary among historians; some accounts place him in the late 4th century, others in the early 5th. In some traditions he is treated as an ancestor of Genseric, though the exact relationship is not consistently stated.

Other potential references to Gunderic in Gothic and Vandal genealogies are fragmentary and not reliably corroborated by contemporary sources. Because of the scarcity and inconsistency of evidence, modern scholarship often treats Gunderic as part of the broader pattern of Germanic royal nomina rather than as a well-documented, independent ruler.

The name persists in modern scholarship as an example of Vandalic and Gothic royal nomenclature and as a linguistic relic of the early Germanic world. Variations in spelling reflect Latinization and the transmission of sources across centuries.

See also: Genseric, Vandals, Goths, Jordanes.