The area around what is now the town of Sankt Goar was already settled in Roman times. The name in the Early Middle Ages was Wochara, after a short brook emptying into the Rhine here.
The name by which the town goes today is from Goar of Aquitaine, who came to live on the site where the town now stands during Frankish, Merovingian King Childebert I’s reign (511-538). Goar came as a young clergyman (actually, a monk) from Aquitaine in the southwest of France and at first lived as a hermit in a cave on the Rhine. With leave from the Bishop of Trier, he worked as a missionary to the local people. He was well known for his great hospitality, particularly towards the Rhine boatmen. Later, he built on the site where the town now stands a hospice and a chapel. Many legends gathered about him. After his death, about 575, Goar’s grave became a pilgrimage site and the place was named after him. Frankish King Pepin the Younger transferred the hospice and chapel in 765 to the Abbot of the Benedictine Prüm Abbey as a personal benefice. From this grew the Sankt Goar Canonical Foundation, witnessed as early as the late 11th century