Ur is the recorded name for the rune in both Old English and Old Norse, found as the second rune in all futharks (runic alphabets starting with F, U, Þ, Ą, R, K), i.e. the Germanic Elder Futhark, the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc and the Norse Younger Futhark, with continued use in the later medieval runes, early modern runes and Dalecarlian runes.
It corresponds to the letter u in the Latin alphabet, but also carries other sound values, especially in Younger Futhark, where its sound values correspond to the vowels: , , and etc., and the consonants: and etc., in the Latin alphabet.
Character
thumb|upright=0.5|Ur depicted on the oldest datable runestone, the [[Hole Runestone (50 BC–275 AD).]]
The character ᚢ may have been derived from the Old Italic scripts, as such features various characters corresponding to elder runes, including both upside and downside characters for Upsilon (/u, y/): 12px|link=Upsilon, 12px|link=Upsilon, specifically the East Rhaetic alphabet from the Magrè-region of north-east Italy, which primarily used the downside Old Italic Upsilon.
{| style="text-align:center"
| style="padding-left:1em" | 50px|link=Waw (letter)
| style="font-size:30px" | →
| 40px|link=Upsilon
| style="font-size:30px" | →
| 50px|link=Upsilon
| style="font-size:30px" | →
| 50px|link=Upsilon
| style="font-size:30px" | →
| style="font-size:50px" | ᚢ
|-
| Phoenician<br>waw
|
| West Greek<br>Upsilon
|
| West Rhaetic<br>Upsilon
|
| East Rhaetic<br>Upsilon
|
| Germanic rune<br>Ur
|}
The character was later reused as the 16th letter in the Gothic alphabet (𐌿), the corresponding name being urus.
Proto-Germanic name
The rune is recorded in all three rune poems (Old English, Norwegian, Icelandic), and it is called Ur in all, however with different meanings in each. In Danish and Norwegian, the word (ur) is said to mean "northern rainclouds", The original scribe used diacritic abbreviation symbols to save space, which are hard to make out at a first glance. These symbols are based on period Arabic numerals,
The Swedish rune poem have more in common with the Icelandic rune poem than the Norwegian one, but are much shorter.
{|
! style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; text-align:right" | Runic:
| style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; font-size:120%" |
|-
! style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; text-align:right" | Transliteration:
| style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; font-size:120%" | urr i væstan væđđr
|-
! style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; text-align:right" | Normalized:
| style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; font-size:120%" | Urr i västan vädhr
|-
! style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; text-align:right" | Current Swedish:
| style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; font-size:120%" | Ur i västanväder
|-
! style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em; text-align:right" | Translation:
| style="padding-left: 1em; padding-bottom: .5em" | "Ur in west wind"
|}
Variants
(Ȳr) – Anglo-Frisian Futhorc
The Anglo-Frisian Futhark has a modified Ūr , fitted with a detached vertical line in the cavity , which was given the sound value . It was named Ȳr and corresponded to the letter y in the Latin alphabet.
Its position in the Anglo-Frisian rune-row differs between sources and was probably never standardised, but today it is generally placed at position 27.
(stung Úr) – Norse Younger Futhark
thumb|un-stung Ur → single-stung Ur → double-stung Ur
In the 11th century, a new writing rule was introduced to the Younger Futhark, in the form of stung runes (also called dotted runes), in which stings, i.e. dots, could be added to a rune to indicate a secondary sound value,a so called diacritic.
The stung Úr primarily carried the sound value in East Norse (Swedish/Danish) and corresponds to the letter y in the Latin alphabet (unicode name: Runic Letter Y). Secondarily, it can also carry the sound value and seldom even , the latter of which was also carried by the stung Fé (unicode name: Runic Letter V). In period West Norse (Norwegian/Icelandic), the sound value /y/ was instead commonly carried by the rune Yr , as its previous sound value, , had evolved into the common /r/ and was thus an obsolete doublet of the rune Reið . In the following medieval runic alphabet, the sound value was covered by its own rune, a reversed Óss (unicode: Runic Letter Oe). A double-stung Ur also existed for the sound value /å/, also seldom used for /v/.
Stung runes were originally not seen as separate runes from their base form, they are just runes with added diacritics, adn thus were not listed in the Younger Futhark-order. In the later medieval runic alphabet, which followed the Latin alphabetical order of ABCD etc, they instead have the position of their corresponding Latin character.