Feoh
The first rune of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, transliterated f. Old English feoh means wealth or cattle, and survives in modern English as "fee".
At a glance
- Rune
- ᚠU+16A0
- Unicode name
- RUNIC LETTER FEHU FEOH FE F
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- In use
- c. AD 400 – 1100 (Early medieval England and Frisia)
- Position
- 1, ætt 1
- Transliteration
- f
- Sound value
- /f/ , /v/
- Name
- feoh: wealth, money, cattleAttested
Names
How the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.
| Form | Language | Meaning | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| feoh | Old English | wealth, money, cattle | Attested |
An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.
Etymology
Continues the inherited *fehu unchanged. Old English feoh gives modern English "fee". "Fellow" comes from the same root by a different route: Old Norse félagi, fé plus lag, someone who lays down wealth with you, borrowed into late Old English from the Norse rather than formed from feoh.
Sound value
Writes /f/, and also /v/ between voiced sounds, since Old English treated the two as one sound in different positions.
Historical use
Rune-poem evidence
The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.
Feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum; sceal ðeah manna gehwylc miclun hyt dælan gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan.Wealth is a comfort to everyone; yet every person must share it out freely, if they wish to be granted glory before the Lord.(our translation)
The moralising second half is characteristic: the poem repeatedly turns a rune name into a Christian lesson.
Attested in
Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.
- Franks CasketNorthumbria; now British Museum and Bargello · early 8th century
A whalebone box carved with scenes from Germanic legend, Roman history and the Gospels, captioned in Old English runes and in Latin. The single richest futhorc object.
Signatures follow the Scandinavian Runic-text Database so you can look each inscription up directly. Each name links to the object's own entry.
Modern meaning
Why this entry has none.
None is given here. Modern rune divination is built almost entirely on the Elder Futhark, and no established modern tradition reads the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc separately. Inventing a reading for Feoh to fill the space would be exactly the kind of fabrication this site exists to flag, so the field is left empty rather than filled. Its Elder Futhark ancestor is linked further down and does carry a modern reading, labelled as modern. How modern rune meanings were arrived at is a separate discussion.
The same rune in other alphabets
Runes descended from the same original character, so you can follow it through time.
The rest of ætt 1
Sources for this entry
Full references are on the sources page. If you think something here is wrong, our corrections policy explains how to say so.