Ur (rune)

(50 BC–275 AD). The character ᚢ may have been derived from the Old Italic scripts, as such features various characters corresponding to elder runes, including both upside and downside characters for Upsilon (/u, y/): , , specifically the East Rhaetic alphabet from the Magrè-region of north-east Italy, which primarily used the downside Old Italic Upsilon. The character was later reused as the 16th letter in the Gothic alphabet (𐌿), the corresponding name being urus. == Proto-Germanic name ==

The rune is recorded in all three rune poems (Old English, Norwegian, Icelandic), and it is called Ur in all, however with different meanings in each. Because of this, it is difficult to reconstruct a Proto-Germanic name for the Elder Futhark rune. It may have been *ūruz "aurochs" (see also Bull worship), based on the Old English rune poem, the oldest recorded of the three, supported by the corresponding Gothic name uraz, recorded by Alcuin of York in the 8th century, or *ūrą "water", based on the Icelandic rune poems (and to some extent the Norwegian rune poem), with both Proto-Germanic words, however, possibly stemming from the same root. The aurochs name is preferred by authors of modern runic divination systems, but both seem possible, compared to the names of the other runes: "water" would be comparable to "hail" and "lake", and "aurochs" to "horse" or "elk" (although the latter name is itself uncertain). The Gothic alphabet seems to support "aurochs" as the prior name, though: as the name of the letter 𐌿 u is urus. == Anglo-Saxon name ==

In the Old English rune poem, recorded in the 8th or 9th century, the rune is named Ūr, Old English for “aurochs” (compare with ), stemming from a Proto-Germanic word: *ūruz. ;Old English rune poem == Old Norse name ==

The Old Norse name is variously recorded as Ur, meaning some type of cold damp and windy precipitation weather, but the definition warries slightly between the Nordic languages. In Old Icelandic, the word úr is recorded as meaning "drizzle", "light rain" and thereof, in the sense of "cold and damp weather". In Danish and Norwegian, the word (ur) is said to mean "northern rainclouds", The original scribe used diacritic abbreviation symbols to save space, which are hard to make out at a first glance. These symbols are based on period Arabic numerals, The Swedish rune poem have more in common with the Icelandic rune poem than the Norwegian one, but are much shorter. == Variants ==

(Ȳr) – Anglo-Frisian Futhorc The Anglo-Frisian Futhark has a modified Ūr , fitted with a detached vertical line in the cavity , which was given the sound value . It was named Ȳr and corresponded to the letter y in the Latin alphabet. Its position in the Anglo-Frisian rune-row differs between sources and was probably never standardised, but today it is generally placed at position 27. (stung Úr) – Norse Younger Futhark In the 11th century, a new writing rule was introduced to the Younger Futhark, in the form of stung runes (also called dotted runes), in which stings, i.e. dots, could be added to a rune to indicate a secondary sound value,a so called diacritic. The stung Úr primarily carried the sound value in East Norse (Swedish/Danish) and corresponds to the letter y in the Latin alphabet (unicode name: Runic Letter Y). Secondarily, it can also carry the sound value and seldom even , the latter of which was also carried by the stung Fé (unicode name: Runic Letter V). In period West Norse (Norwegian/Icelandic), the sound value /y/ was instead commonly carried by the rune Yr , as its previous sound value, , had evolved into the common /r/ and was thus an obsolete doublet of the rune Reið . In the following medieval runic alphabet, the sound value was covered by its own rune, a reversed Óss (unicode: Runic Letter Oe). A double-stung Ur also existed for the sound value /å/, also seldom used for /v/. Stung runes were originally not seen as separate runes from their base form, they are just runes with added diacritics, adn thus were not listed in the Younger Futhark-order. In the later medieval runic alphabet, which followed the Latin alphabetical order of ABCD etc, they instead have the position of their corresponding Latin character. == Footnotes ==