Thurisaz

NameProto-GermanicOld EnglishOld Norse
*ÞurisazÞornÞurs
"giant""thorn""giant"
ShapeElder FutharkFuthorcYounger Futhark
Unicode
U+16A6
Transliterationþ
Transcriptionþþ, ð
IPA[θ][θ], [ð]
Position in
rune-row
3

The rune is called Thurs (Old Norse Þurs, a type of entity, from a reconstructed Common Germanic *Þurisaz) in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems. In the Anglo-Saxon rune poem it is called thorn, whence the name of the letter þ derived. It is transliterated as þ, and has the sound value of a voiceless dental fricative /θ/ (the English sound of th as in thing).

The rune is absent from the earliest Vimose inscriptions, but it is found in the Thorsberg chape inscription, dated to ca. AD 200.

The rune may have been an original innovation, or it may have been adapted from the classical Latin alphabet's D,[1] or from the Rhaetic's alphabet's Θ.[2]

  1. ^ Odenstedt, Bengt (1990), On the Origin and Early History of the Runic Script, Typology and Graphic Variation in the Older Futhark, Uppsala, ISBN 91-85352-20-9{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
  2. ^ Gippert, Jost, The Development of Old Germanic Alphabets, Uni Frankfurt, archived from the original on 25 February 2021, retrieved 21 March 2007.