Ehwaz

*Ehwaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark "e" rune runic|ᛖ, meaning "horse" (cognate to Latin "equus", Sanskrit "aśva", Avestan "aspa" and Old Irish "ech"). In the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, it is continued as runic|ᛖ "eh" (properly "eoh", but spelled without the diphthong to avoid confusion with runic|ᛇ "ēoh" "yew").

The Proto-Germanic vowel system was asymmetric and unstable. The difference between the long vowels expressed by runic|ᛖ "e" and runic|ᛇ "ï" (sometimes transcribed as "*ē₁" and "*ē₂") were 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 case of the Gothic alphabet, where the names of the runes were re-applied to letters derived from the Greek alphabet, the letter unicode|