In this paper, we study the longitudinal linear and nonlinear free vibration response of a single walled carbonnanotube (CNT) embedded in an elastic medium subjected to different boundary conditions. This formulation isbased on a large deformation analysis in which the linear and nonlinear von Kármán strains and their gradientare included in the expression of the strain energy and the velocity and its gradient are taken into account in theexpression of the kinetic energy. Therefore, static and kinetic length scales associated with both energies areintroduced to model size effects. The governing motion equation along with the boundary conditions are derivedusing Hamilton's principle. Closed-form solutions for the linear free vibration problem of the embedded CNTrod are first obtained. Then, the nonlinear free vibration response is investigated for various values of lengthscales using the method of multiple scales.