The oldest secure element of Albion's story is the name of the island, not the biography of a giant. Classical authors used Albion as a name for Britain, and Pliny the Elder wrote that the island had formerly been called Albion. Those references do not establish that an ancient ruler named Albion existed. The personified giant emerges from later attempts to turn a place-name into a founder and to fit Britain into universal legendary histories that connected biblical, classical and local traditions.

Raphael Holinshed's sixteenth-century Chronicles preserve the fullest version of the giant's story. Holinshed reports that Neptune placed his son Albion in possession of Britain, where the giant became ruler and the island took his name. Albion's brother Bergion ruled other northern islands. When Hercules passed through Gaul, Albion and Bergion gathered forces to stop him. The fighting turns against Hercules until stones are used as weapons; Holinshed links this to the classical tale that Jupiter helped Hercules by sending a shower of stones. Albion and Bergion are slain. Importantly, Holinshed also notes that many did not accept the story of Albion the giant, making its legendary status explicit even within the chronicle that retells it.

Arthurian legendary history uses the name Albion in a different way. Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain tells how Brutus, a Trojan exile descended from Aeneas, sails west and reaches an island called Albion. Geoffrey describes the land as fertile but inhabited by a small number of giants. Brutus and his followers defeat them, rename the island Britain, and establish a new Trojan kingdom. The best-known surviving giant is Gogmagog, who is defeated by Brutus's companion Corineus. Geoffrey does not need the earlier giant Albion to explain the island in this episode: Albion already exists as the land's old name.

Another medieval tradition, Des Grantz Geanz, explains Albion through Albina, one of a group of exiled sisters whose descendants are giants. The competing stories show how flexible the name became: it could belong to the island, to a male giant, or to a legendary female founder. Centuries later William Blake gave the name a new scale in Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion. Blake's Albion is not simply Holinshed's giant king but a cosmic personification whose division and restoration carry spiritual and national meaning. Across these traditions, Albion is most useful as a mythological embodiment of Britain rather than as a historical ruler.