Ehwaz

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Ehwaz

Ehwaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark e-rune ᛖ, meaning "horse" (cognate to Latin equus, Sanskrit aśva 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 Anglo-Saxon rune poem has:

ᛖ Eh byþ for eorlum æþelinga wyn,

hors hofum wlanc, ðær him hæleþ ymb[e]

welege on wicgum wrixlaþ spræce

and biþ unstyllum æfre frofur.

"The horse is a joy to princes in the presence of warriors.

A steed in the pride of its hoofs,

when rich men on horseback bandy words about it;

and it is ever a source of comfort to the restless."

The Proto-Germanic vowel system was asymmetric and unstable; the difference between the vowels expressed by ᛖ e and ᛇ ï was soon lost. The Younger Futhark continues neither, lacking a letter expressing e altogether. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc faithfully preserved all Elder Futhorc letters, but assigned new sound values to the redundant ones, Futhorc ēoh expressing a diphthong. In the case of the Gothic alphabet, where the names of the runes were re-applied to letters derived from the Greek alphabet, the letter 𐌴 e was named aiƕus "horse" as well (note that in Gothic orthography, ai represents monophthongic /e/).