- Name
- *ehwaz
- Meaning
- horse
- Name known from
- Old English eh 'horse' (rune poem); Gothic letter name eyz in Codex Vindobonensis 795; the word is cognate with Latin equus; no Scandinavian name, the rune having gone out of use there
- Transliteration
- e
- Sound
- /e/, /eː/
- Unicode
U+16D6runic letter ehwaz eh e
Line of descent
History
The e rune has two forms in the early period. In the oldest inscriptions it usually looks like a Π, two staves with a level or slightly sloping top. From the 5th century the familiar M-like form, two staves joined by crossing diagonals, becomes usual. Some have linked it to Latin E, but the derivation is not clear.
The name *ehwaz "horse" is reconstructed from the Old English rune poem, where eh is "the joy of princes, a steed proud in its hooves", and from the Gothic letter name eyz. The word belongs with Latin equus. It died out in ordinary Old Norse, where the horse was hestr or hross, and the rune itself was dropped from the Scandinavian row in the 8th century. There is no Norse rune name for it. The reconstruction is reasonably secure, but the asterisk matters: no early source writes the name down.
The first-person pronoun ek "I" gives many examples: ek hlewagastiz on the Gallehus horn, ek wiwaz on the Tune stone, ek erilaz on the Lindholm bone piece and the Kragehul spear-shaft.
After the reduction to sixteen runes, Norse e was written with íss or ár, until the dotted ᛂ of the medieval runes. In England the rune continued as eh.
In the rune poems
hors hofum wlanc, ðær him hæleþ ymb[e]
welege on wicgum wrixlaþ spræce
and biþ unstyllum æfre frofur.
a steed proud in its hooves, where heroes around it,
wealthy men on horseback, exchange words;
and to the restless it is always a comfort.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Gallehus horn (DR 12): ek hlewagastiz
- Tune stone (N KJ72): ek wiwaz
- Kragehul spear-shaft (DR 196): ek erilaz
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata), signa DR 12, N KJ72, DR 196, DR 261
- Wikipedia, 'Ehwaz' and 'Elder Futhark' (checked 2026-10-26), for the Gothic name eyz and the Π-shaped early form