Gar

The last of the four Northumbrian additions, transliterated g, and the thirty-third rune of the manuscript row. Its name means "spear", and it was added because sound change had left the hard /g/ without a rune of its own.

U+16B8transliterated g/g/c. AD 400 – 1100

At a glance

Rune: ᚸU+16B8
Unicode name: RUNIC LETTER GAR
Alphabet: Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
In use: c. AD 400 – 1100 (Early medieval England and Frisia)
Position: 33
Transliteration: g
Sound value: /g/
Name: gar: spearAttested

Names

How the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.

Form	Language	Meaning	Evidence
gar	Old English	spear	Attested

An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.

Etymology

Old English gar means a spear, a common and well-attested word that appears throughout the poetry: Beowulf opens with the Gar-Dene, the spear-Danes. Along with stan it is one of only two Northumbrian additions whose name is entirely unproblematic.

AttestedPage 1999

Sound value

A hard /g/, added for the same reason as calc: English palatalisation had given the original gyfu rune a /j/ value before front vowels, leaving the hard sound without a dedicated character.

Historical use

Appears in manuscript rows (it is the thirty-third and final rune of the row in Cotton Domitian A.ix) and in a small number of inscriptions, including the Ruthwell Cross. Like calc, it answers a real need created by sound change rather than being a decorative addition, which is probably why it saw more use than cweorð or stan.

AttestedPage 1999; Barnes 2012

Attested in

Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.

Manuscript futhorc rowsEngland · 10th–11th century
Extended alphabet rows, where the Northumbrian additions are best attested. Gar closes the 33-rune row.

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 Gar 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. How modern rune meanings were arrived at is a separate discussion.

Sources for this entry

Page 1999; Barnes 2012

Full references are on the sources page. If you think something here is wrong, our corrections policy explains how to say so.

Gar