- Name
- ac
- Meaning
- oak
- Transliteration
- a
- Sound
- /ɑ/, /ɑː/ (back a)
- Unicode
U+16AArunic letter ac a
Line of descent
History
a is one of the three runes that English and Frisian carvers made out of the elder *ansuz. When short a was fronted to æ in most positions, the old shape went to æsc. A new rune was needed for the a that stayed back, chiefly before nasals and back vowels and in the long vowel ā. This is ac "oak": the ansuz shape with an extra stroke. Dickins thought it was a ligature of a and i, matching the older form of the word, *aik-. Whether that explains the shape is uncertain.
The earliest examples come from Frisia. The Schweindorf solidus, dated about 575–625, is cited as the first, and the Harlingen solidus spells hada with two a runes. In England the rune is common. The front of the Franks Casket has it in ahof, warþga and ban.
The rune poem praises the oak twice over: on land it feeds the flesh (acorns fattened pigs), and at sea the ocean "tests whether the oak keeps noble faith", the oak now being a ship. On the right side of the Franks Casket a cryptic variant of a is used, encoded separately in Unicode (ᛷ).
In the rune poems
flæsces fodor, fereþ gelome
ofer ganotes bæþ; garsecg fandaþ
hwæþer ac hæbbe æþele treowe.
the feeder of flesh; it often travels
over the gannet's bath; the ocean tests
whether the oak keeps noble faith.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Schweindorf solidus (Frisia, c. 575–625): among the earliest a runes
- Harlingen solidus (Frisia): hada
- Seax of Beagnoth, position 25
- Franks Casket, front panel: ahof, warþga, ban
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Dickins (1915), pp. 20–21 and note to v. 77.
- Wikipedia, 'Anglo-Saxon runes' (Frisian list), checked 2026-10.