Did you know that the 26 letters we use in English today were not in the original English alphabet? The first English alphabet consisted of character known as runes; today, this alphabet is sometimes called Futhorc, a name which is derived from the sounds of the first 6 runes in the alphabet.
Here is a list of 30 runes used in this ancient alphabet with their names and transliterations in parentheses:
- ᚠ (feh; f)
- ᚢ (ur; u)
- ᚦ (ðorn; th)
- ᚩ (os; o)
- ᚱ (rada; r)
- ᚳ (cen; c)
- ᚷ (geofu; g)
- ᚹ (wyn; w)
- ᚻ (hægil; h)
- ᚾ (næd; n)
- ᛁ (is; i)
- ᛡ / ᛄ (gær; j)
- ᛇ (ih; ï)
- ᛈ (peord; p)
- ᛉ (ilcs; x)
- ᛋ / ᚴ (sygil; s)
- ᛏ (ti; t)
- ᛒ (berc; b)
- ᛖ (eh; e)
- ᛗ (mon; m)
- ᛚ (lagu; l)
- ᛝ (ing; ŋ)
- ᛟ (oedil; œ)
- ᛞ (dæg; d)
- ᚪ (ac; a)
- ᚫ (æsc; æ)
- ᛠ (ear; ea)
- ᚣ (yr; y)
- ᛣ (calc; k)
- ᚸ (gar; ḡ)
These runes were used in both Old English and Old Frisian, which is why they are sometimes called the Anglo-Saxon runes or the Anglo-Frisian runes. They were used from the 5th to the 11th centuries, however, the English alphabet switched from the Anglo-Saxon runes to the Latin alphabet around the 8th century.
Our current English alphabet still uses the original, 23-letter Latin alphabet with the addition of the letters J, U, and W. Surprisingly, these three letters were apparently not the only letters that English appended to its version of the Latin alphabet; English used to possess 6 other letters that are now extinct!
Ð, ð (eth)
This letter is pronounced with the TH sound in feather. The letter unsurprisingly represented that very same TH sound in Old English. The letter went extinct when we began representing the south with the consonant team TH.
Þ, þ (thorn)
This letter is pronounced with the TH sound in thin. The letter was used to represent the same TH sound in Old English, but it is now represented by the TH consonant team. You might have noticed that the rune ᚦ (ðorn) represented a very similar sound, as well as the fact that the appearance of the rune is quite similar to that of the letter thorn. Another similarity is that the name of the rune ᚦ translates to thorn.
Ƿ, ƿ (Wynn)
This letter was used to represent the W sound. Besides using wynn to represent the W sound, some people used UU to represent the sound. The double U combination became more popular and eventually replaced wynn, however, the combination was eventually replaced by a single letter, W. It’s really not hard to see how the new letter got its name.
I assume the rune ᚹ (wyn) is from where the letter wynn comes.
Why does W look like two V characters and not two U characters? I’m not sure, but I theorize that it has something to do with the fact that, in previous versions of English, both the V and U sounds were written as the letter V at the beginning of a word and written as the letter U in all other positions, therefore the word cow might have been written as couu and the word water may have been spelled vvater. If this is true, it’s possible that they simply preferred VV over UU, but kept the name double U because they were technically doubling the letter U and not V, but that is just my theory.
Ȝ, ȝ (Yogh)
This letter represented a sound similar to the Scottish loch or the German acht. Interestingly, this means that this bizarre sound used to be used in English, but when considering that English stems from the same, West Germanic branch of Germanic languages like German does, it’s not that surprising that English would adopt a sound which is common in German. Yogh was eventually replaced with the consonant team GH, which is now often silent. An example of this is the English word daughter; fun fact, the German word for daughter is tochter, which is remarkably similar to English if you replace the GH with yogh: dauȝter.
Æ, æ (ash)
This letter was used in Old English to represent a vowel sound similar to that of the Modern English A as in cat.
Œ, œ (ethel)
This is a strange letter that was used in Old English to represent a sound somewhere between the O and E sounds, but it was originally pronounced like the OI in coil.
Which Old English rune or letter is your favorite?
Onward American 