Names in Anglo-Saxon runes
| Text | Anglo-Saxon Runes |
|---|---|
| Beowulf | ᛒᛖᚩᚹᚢᛚᚠ |
| England | ᛖᛝᛚᚪᚾᛞ |
| Alfred | ᚪᛚᚠᚱᛖᛞ |
| Hild | ᚻᛁᛚᛞ |
| Wisdom and courage | ᚹᛁᛋᛞᚩᛗ᛫ᚪᚾᛞ᛫ᚳᚩᚢᚱᚪᚷᛖ |
Anglo-Saxon futhorc (29 runes)
What the futhorc is
The Anglo-Saxons and Frisians reshaped the older Germanic runes into the futhorc, named after its first six runes: f, u, þ, o, r, c. As the sounds of Old English changed, they added runes such as āc (ᚪ), æsc (ᚫ), ȳr (ᚣ) and ēar (ᛠ), until there were about 28 to 33, depending on time and place.
Runes survive on objects such as the Franks Casket and the Ruthwell Cross, and the Old English Rune Poem names and describes 29 of them. Those 29 are the ones in the chart.
Futhorc or Norse runes?
The Norse runes of the Viking Age went the other way and shrank to 16, so the two alphabets look alike but differ: ᚩ is o in England, and the English h, ᚻ, has two crossbars. For Viking names, use the Norse rune translator.
How this tool spells English
Each letter becomes the rune for its sound: c and k become cēn (ᚳ), j becomes gēr (ᛄ), q becomes cēn and wynn (ᚳᚹ), v becomes feoh (ᚠ), and z becomes sigel (ᛋ), since Old English had no z. th becomes þorn (ᚦ), ng becomes ing (ᛝ) and ea becomes ēar (ᛠ). The words themselves stay in modern English.
Before a rune tattoo
Double-check every rune. Futhorc spelling was never standardized, scholars disagree about a few rune values (such as ēoh, ᛇ), and this tool spells modern English letter by letter.
Sources & method
Every rune’s code point and Unicode name was checked against the Unicode Character Database 16.0, for example ᚪ is U+16AA RUNIC LETTER AC A, so these are the standard Unicode characters for the futhorc.
The spelling rules above are this tool’s own choice for writing modern English. Unicode identifies the characters; it doesn’t make an English spelling historical.
Checked against
- Unicode Runic code chart (U+16A0–U+16FF)names and code points of all 29 runes