Knud, or Knut, a very common northern name, is a very puzzling one.  Its origin and nationality are Danish, and it only came to Norway by intermarriages, nor does it appear at all in the Landnamabok.  The great Dane who brought it here is called by the chroniclers Canutus, from some notion of making it the Latin hoary, and thus we know him as Canute; but even in Domesday, one landholder in Yorkshire, and another in Derbyshire, are entered as Cnud.  The whole North, and the inhabitants of the Hebrides, use the name, which somes from the same root as our knot, and properly means a protuberance, a hill, or barrow. (History of Christian Names, Yonge, 1884).