Ehwaz
Ehwaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark e-rune ᛖ, meaning "horse" (cognate to Latin equus, Sanskrit aśva 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 Anglo-Saxon rune poem has:
- ᛖ Eh byþ for eorlum æþelinga wyn,
- hors hofum wlanc, ðær him hæleþ ymb[e]
- welege on wicgum wrixlaþ spræce
- and biþ unstyllum æfre frofur.
- "The horse is a joy to princes in the presence of warriors.
- A steed in the pride of its hoofs,
- when rich men on horseback bandy words about it;
- and it is ever a source of comfort to the restless."
The Proto-Germanic vowel system was asymmetric and unstable; the difference between the vowels expressed by ᛖ e and ᛇ ï was soon lost. The Younger Futhark continues neither, lacking a letter expressing e altogether. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc faithfully preserved all Elder Futhorc letters, but assigned new sound values to the redundant ones, Futhorc ēoh expressing a diphthong. In the case of the Gothic alphabet, where the names of the runes were re-applied to letters derived from the Greek alphabet, the letter 𐌴 e was named aiƕus "horse" as well (note that in Gothic orthography, ai represents monophthongic /e/).