The Yr rune 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 capitals r (ʀ), which is also used for other purposes: in the International Phonetic Alphabet, lowercase ʀ represents a uvular trill.
Unicode encoding
Unicode has "Latin Small Capital Letter R" at codepoint U+0280 ʀ. A corresponding capital letter is at U+01A6 Ʀ, called "Latin Letter Yr". The rune itself is encoded at U+16E6 ᛦ "Long Branch Yr". Variants are "Short Twig Yr" at U+16E7 ᛧ and "Icelandic Yr" at U+16E8 ᛨ.
Similar symbols
Note that the unrelated Anglo-Saxon calc rune ᛣ has exactly the same shape as Younger Futhark yr.
See also
References
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The Letter "R" |
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