The chronicle (Hardy, Vol III, No. 326) describes Egbert's wife as "Redburga regis Francorum sororia" (sister or sister-in-law of the Frankish Emperor). Some nineteenth century historians cited the manuscipt to identify Redburga as Egbert's wife, such W. G. Searle in his 1897 Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum and (as Rædburh) in his 1899 Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings and Nobles. Other historians of that time were sceptical, such as William Hunt, who did not mention Redburga in his article about Egbert in the original Dictionary of National Biography in 1889. In the twentieth century, popular genealogists and historians have followed Searle in naming Redburga as Egbert's wife, but academic historians ignore her when discussing Egbert, and Janet Nelson's 2004 article on his son Æthelwulf in the Online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that his mother's name in unknown.