- Name
- *wunjō
- Meaning
- joy
- Name known from
- Old English wynn 'joy' (rune poem, spelled wenne); the Gothic letter name in Codex Vindobonensis 795 is uuinne, possibly a different word (Gothic winja 'pasture'); no Scandinavian name, the rune having gone out of use there
- Transliteration
- w
- Sound
- /w/
- Unicode
U+16B9runic letter wunjo wynn w
Line of descent
History
The w rune looks like a P with a pointed bow. Its origin is uncertain. Latin P, Latin Q and a North Italic letter for w have all been proposed. On the Kylver stone only part of it survives, but its eighth place is fixed by the Vadstena and Mariedamm bracteates, which end the first ætt with w.
The name is reconstructed as *wunjō "joy" from the Old English poem, where wynn is the joy of the one "who knows few troubles". The Gothic name uuinne in the Vienna manuscript has been read as winja "pasture" as well as "joy", so the reconstruction rests mainly on English. Like gebo, the rune was dropped from the Scandinavian row in the 8th century. Old Norse then wrote w (and later v) with the úr rune, so no Norse name exists.
Early examples include tawido "made" on the Gallehus horn and the name wiwaz on the Tune stone. In both, w stands for the semivowel that Latin wrote with V.
The rune had a long afterlife in England. As wynn it was taken into the Old English book-hand as the letter ƿ, alongside þ, because the Latin alphabet had no single letter for w. Scribes used ƿ until about the 13th century, when the Norman double-u replaced it.
In the rune poems
sares and sorge and him sylfa hæfþ
blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.
of pain and sorrow, and has for himself
prosperity and bliss, and enough of strongholds too.
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): tawido
- Tune stone (N KJ72): wiwaz, woduride
- Vadstena (Ög 178) and Mariedamm (Nä 10) bracteates: first ætt fuþarkgw
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata), signa DR 12, N KJ72, Ög 178, Nä 10
- Dickins (1915), Old English rune poem l. 22 and note
- Wikipedia, 'Wynn' and 'Elder Futhark' (checked 2026-10-26)