Ehwaz

Elder Futhark rune NameProto-GermanicOld English*EhwazE(o)h"horse"ShapeElder FutharkFuthorcUnicodeᛖ U+16D6TransliterationeTranscriptioneIPA[e(ː)]Position inrune-row19 *Ehwaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark e rune ᛖ, meaning "horse" (cognate to Latin equus, Gaulish epos, Tocharian B yakwe, Sanskrit aśva, Avestan aspa 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 Proto-Germanic vowel system was asymmetric and unstable. The difference between the long vowels expressed by ᛖ e and ᛇ ï (sometimes transcribed as *ē1 and *ē2) was lost. The Younger Futhark continues neither, lacking a letter expressing e altogether. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc faithfully preserved all Elder futhorc staves, but assigned new sound values to the redundant ones, futhorc ēoh expressing a diphthong. In the Gothic alphabet, the names of the runes were re-applied to letters derived from the Greek alphabet. The name of the Gothic letter 𐌴 (e) is attested as eyz, which has been interpreted as the Gothic word *𐌰𐌹𐍈𐍃 (*aiƕs) "horse" (note that i