Eihwaz

Common card · No. 380907

Eiwaz or Eihaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the rune ᛇ, coming from a word for "yew". Two variants of the word are reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, *īhaz (*ē²haz, from Proto-Indo-European *eikos), continued in Old English as ēoh (also īh), and *īwaz (*ē²waz, from Proto-Indo-European *eiwos), continued in Old English as īw (whence English yew). The latter is possibly an early loan from the Celtic, compare Gaulish ivos, Breton ivin, Welsh ywen, Old Irish eó. The common spelling of the rune's name, "Eihwaz", combines the two variants; strictly based on the Old English evidence, a spelling "Eihaz" would be more proper. Following the convention of Wolfgang Krause, the rune's standard transliteration today is ï, though this designation is somewhat arbitrary as the rune's purpose and origin are still not well understood. Elmer Antonsen and Leo Connolly theorized that the rune originally stood for a Proto-Germanic vowel lost by the time of the earliest known runic inscriptions,...

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