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Name Proto-Germanic Anglo-Saxon *Jē₂ran / *Jē₂raz Gēr Ior "year, harvest" Shape Elder Futhark Futhorc Unicode ᛃ U+16C3 ᛄ U+16C4 ᛡ U+16E1 Transliteration j io Transcription j io IPA [j] [jo] Position in rune-row 12 28 or 29

*Jēran or *Jēraz (stem *jē₂ra-;^[1] Gothic jēr, Anglo-Frisian ȝēr /yēr/, Old High German and Old Saxon jār, Old Norse ār) "harvest, (good) year" is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the j-rune ᛃ of the Elder Futhark.

[edit] Etymology

Proto-Germanic *jē₂ran is cognate with Avestan yāre "year", Greek ὧρος (oros) "year" (and ὥρα (ora) "season", whence hour), Slavonic jarŭ "spring" and with the -or- in Latin hornus "of this year" (from *ho-jōrinus), all from a PIE stem *yer-o-.

[edit] Elder Futhark

The derivation of the rune is uncertain; some scholars see it as a modification of Latin G ("C (ᚲ) with stroke") while others consider it a Germanic innovation. The letter in any case appears from the very earliest runic inscriptions, figuring on the Vimose comb inscription, harja.

The evolution of the rune was the most thorough transformation of all runes, and it was to have numerous versions.^[2]

[edit] Anglo-Saxon runes

The rune in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc is continued as ᛄ Gēr and ᛡ Ior, the latter a bind rune of Gyfu and Is (compare also ᛠ Ear). Gēr is consistently written ᛡ eprigraphically and on artifacts, while the ᛄ form for [j] appears only rarely in later manuscripts (as does a separate symbol for Ior).

[edit] From Elder to Younger Futhark

The evolution of the rune.

During the 7th and 8th centuries, the initial j in *jara was lost in Proto-Norse, which also changed the sound value of the rune from /j/ to an /a/ phoneme. The rune was then written as a vertical staff with a horizontal stroke in the centre, and scholars transliterate this form of the rune as A, with majuscule, to distinguish it from the ansuz rune, a. During the last phase of the Elder Futhark, the jēra-rune came to be written as a vertical staff with two slanting strokes in the form of an X in its centre (). As the form of the rune had changed considerably, an older 7th century form of the rune () was assumed by the s-rune.^[2] When the n-rune had stabilized in its form during the 6th and 7th centuries, its vertical stroke slanted towards the right (), which made it possible to simplify the jēra-rune by having only one vertical stroke that slanted towards the left, giving the ᛅ ár-rune of the Younger Futhark. Since a simpler form of the rune was available for the /a/ phoneme, the older cross form of the rune came to be used for the /h/ phoneme.^[3]

[edit] Gothic alphabet

The corresponding Gothic letter is 𐌾 j, named jer, which is also based on the shape of the Elder Futhark rune. This is an exception, shared with urus, due to the fact that neither the Latin nor the Greek alphabets at the time of the introduction of the Gothic one had graphemes corresponding to the distinction of j and w from i and u.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Elder Futhark
• Rune poem