Etymology

This word is first attested in late OE as genge (and its variant gegenge) ‘band, company; military troop’.  Its closest analogue in form and sense is in ON, cp. OIcel gengi ‘good luck, success; help, support; troop’ (see CV on sense development) and it has sometimes been regarded as a loan (so TGD; see also Peters 94, Hofmann §§280, 343, de Vries).  But the root *gang- (as in OE gangan (str. VII) ‘to go’, etc.) is extremely productive in the early Gmc languages and, even if there is no recorded wk. neut. n. in a compatible sense in early OE, there are many comparable derivatives, e.g. gegenga (masc.) ‘companion’, -genga (masc.) ‘goer’ (widespread as the second element of compounds), -genge (fem.) in nihtgenge ‘hyena’, and genge ‘privy’ (fem.), as well as the adj. genge ‘prevalent, valid, current’. It is therefore not implausible that an indigenous wk. neut. (ge)genge ‘group of people going together’ was coined independently in OE (or survived independently from P(NW)Gmc); cp. the range of analogous formations elsewhere in Gmc, viz. OS gigengi ‘row’, Go faúragaggi ‘stewardship, management, administration’, OHG anagengi ‘beginning’.

PGmc Ancestor

*gang- 

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

gengi  ‘good luck, success; help, support; troop’
(ONP gengi (sb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far geingi, Icel gengi, Norw gjenge, ODan gænge, OSw gænge

OE Cognate

gangan (v.) ‘to go’

Phonological and morphological markers

[absence of palatalization of */ɡ/] (possibly diagnostic)

Summary category

CC1c

Attestation

There are several occurrences in later OE (see DOE, Peters 94, SPS) and it is widespread in early ME, esp. in the SWM; but by the later 14c. it has become esp. characteristic of N and E and alliterative texts. 

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 225; Pe 455; Erk 137; WA 812*, 1213, 1648 etc.

Skeat WA interprets the instance at 1648 as pl. form gingis.

Bibliography

MED ging(e (n.) , OED ging (n.) , HTOED , Dance gyng, SPS 440–1, de Vries gengi, Mag. gengi, Seebold gang-a-, Orel *ʒanʒjan, AEW genge (1), DOE genge n.1