Ur (rune)
Name | Proto-Germanic | Old English | Old Norse | |
---|---|---|---|---|
*Ūruz/Ūrą | Ūr | Ȳr | Úr | |
"aurochs" / "water" | "aurochs" | ? | “windy drizzle/snowfall” “dross” | |
Shape | Elder Futhark | Futhorc | Younger Futhark | |
Unicode | ᚢ U+16A2 | ᚢ U+16A2 | ᚣ U+16A3 | ᚢ U+16A2 |
Transliteration | u | u | y | u |
Transcription | u | u | y | u, y, œ, o, ǫ w / v |
IPA | [u(ː)] | [u(ː)] | [y(ː)] | [w, v] |
Position in rune-row | 2 | 2 | 27 | 2 |
The reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark u rune ᚢ is *Ūruz meaning "wild ox"[1] or *Ūrą "water". It may have been derived from the Raetic alphabet character u as it is similar in both shape and sound value. The name of the corresponding letter in the Gothic alphabet is urus.
Name[edit]
The Old West Norse word úr, meaning “drizzle”, or “windy and profuse snowfall” in Old Swedish (related to Old English: ēar, “wave, sea”, potentially also “urine”), and the Old English word Ūr, meaning “aurochs” (compare with Old Norse: úrr), go back to two different Proto-Germanic words, *ūruz and *ūrą, however, possibly from the same root, although, the latter possibly begun by a w-, as found in related words (Swedish: var, “pus”, Old English: wær, “sea”) and historical variants of úr (Old Swedish: vur).[2][3] The Norwegian meaning "dross, slag" is more obscure, but may be an Iron Age technical term derived from the word for water (cf. the Kalevala, where iron is compared to milk).
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), or *ūrą "water". The aurochs 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.
Rune poems[edit]
It is recorded in all three rune poems, and it is called Ur in all, however with different meanings:
Rune Poem:[4] | English Translation: |
Old Norwegian
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Old Icelandic
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Old English
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References[edit]
- ^ Page, R.I. (2005). Runes, page 15. The British Museum Press ISBN 0-7141-8065-3
- ^ "ur subst.1". saob.se (in Swedish). Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). 2012. Retrieved 2024-07-02.
- ^ "ur subst.2". saob.se (in Swedish). Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). 2012. Retrieved 2024-07-02.
- ^ Original poems and translation from the Rune Poem Page Archived 1999-05-01 at the Wayback Machine.