Name | |||
"horse" | |||
Shape | Elder Futhark | Futhorc | |
Unicode | ᛖ
U+16D6
|
||
Transliteration | e | ||
Transcription | e | ||
IPA | [e(ː)] | ||
Position in rune-row | 19 |
*Ehwaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark e rune ᛖ, meaning "horse" (cognate to Latin equus, Gaulish epos, Tocharian B yakwe, Sanskrit aśva, Avestan aspa and Old Irish ech). In the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, it is continued as ᛖ eh (properly eoh, but spelled without the diphthong to avoid confusion with ᛇ ēoh "yew").
The Proto-Germanic vowel system was asymmetric and unstable. The difference between the long vowels expressed by ᛖ e and ᛇ ï (sometimes transcribed as *ē1 and *ē2) were lost. The Younger Futhark continues neither, lacking a letter expressing e altogether. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc faithfully preserved all Elder futhorc staves, but assigned new sound values to the redundant ones, futhorc ēoh expressing a diphthong.