Gyfu
The seventh futhorc rune, transliterated g. Its name means "gift". English kept this rune long after Scandinavia dropped it.
At a glance
- Rune
- ᚷU+16B7
- Unicode name
- RUNIC LETTER GEBO GYFU G
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- In use
- c. AD 400 – 1100 (Early medieval England and Frisia)
- Position
- 7, ætt 1
- Transliteration
- g
- Sound value
- /g/, /j/, /ɣ/
- Name
- gyfu: gift, generosityAttested
Names
What the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.
gyfu, Old English
Attestedgift, generosity
An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.
Etymology
Continues *gebō. Old English gyfu is the ordinary word for a gift, and the poem develops it into a statement about generosity as the thing that sustains an outcast with nothing else.
Sound value
Covers /g/ and, before front vowels, the /j/ sound of modern English "year", another consequence of Old English palatalisation.
Historical use
Rune-poem evidence
The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.
Gyfu gumena byþ gleng and herenys, wraþu and wyrþscype and wræcna gehwam ar and ætwist, ðe byþ oþra leas.Generosity is, among people, an ornament and a praise, a support and an honour; and to every exile it is help and sustenance when they have nothing else.(our translation)
Attested in
Objects and monuments on which this rune can be seen.
- Franks CasketNorthumbria · early 8th century
Appears throughout the casket’s runic captions.
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. Any reading for Gyfu would have to be invented to fill the space, and invented meanings are what this site exists to flag. The rune's 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.
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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
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