Yr rune

The Yr rune runic|ᛦ is a rune of the Younger Futhark. The name "yr" means "yew" in Old Norse.

It developed out of the Algiz rune as the Younger Futhark gradually began to replace the Elder Futhark from the around 600 CE. Its phonological value is also the continuation of the /z/ phoneme represented by Algiz, the word-final "*-z" in Proto Germanic, notably the nominative desinence (PIE "*-s"). In Proto-Norse pronounced closer to /r/, perhaps a retroflex approximant /ɻ/. Within Old Norse, the Proto-Norse phoneme collapses with the /r/ phoneme.

Its common transliteration is a small capital R.

Unicode has "Latin Small Capital Letter R" at codepoint U+0280 Unicode|ʀ. A corresponding capital letter is at U+01A6 Unicode|Ʀ, called "Latin Letter Yr". The rune itself is encoded at U+16E6 runic|ᛦ "Long Branch Yr". Variants are "Short Twig Yr" at U+16E7 runic|ᛧ and "Icelandic Yr" at U+16E8 runic|ᛨ.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet lowercase IPA|ʀ represents a uvular trill.

Note that the unrelated Anglo-Saxon "calc" rune ᛣ has exactly the same shape as Younger Futhark "yr".

ee also

*Algiz
*Younger Futhark

References

* [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/01a6/index.htm Unicode Character 'LATIN LETTER YR' (U+01A6) at Fileformat.info]