Peorð

The fourteenth futhorc rune, transliterated p. Its name peorð occurs nowhere else in Old English and has never been explained: the one rune name that is simply unknown.

U+16C8transliterated p/p/ætt 2c. AD 400 – 1100

At a glance

Rune: ᛈU+16C8
Unicode name: RUNIC LETTER PERTHO PEORTH P
Alphabet: Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
In use: c. AD 400 – 1100 (Early medieval England and Frisia)
Position: 14, ætt 2
Transliteration: p
Sound value: /p/
Name: peorð: unknown; the word appears nowhere else in Old EnglishAttested

Names

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

Form	Language	Meaning	Evidence
peorð	Old English	unknown; the word appears nowhere else in Old English	Attested

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

Etymology

The one genuinely unsolved rune name. Peorð occurs nowhere in Old English outside this poem, and the stanza describes only the setting (play and laughter in a beer-hall) without ever saying what the thing is. Dice-cup, game-piece, pear tree, hearth and musical instrument have all been proposed, and none has carried the field.

ContestedPage 1999; Halsall 1981; Barnes 2012

Sound value

A /p/. Rare, because the sound was uncommon in native Germanic vocabulary.

Historical use

Rare in inscriptions. Its main significance is negative: it is the standing reminder that the rune poems are riddling verse rather than a glossary, and that they do not always tell us what we want to know.

AttestedPage 1999

Rune-poem evidence

The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.

The Old English Rune PoemPeorð · Old English · Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

Peorð byþ symble plega and hlehter wlancum on middum, ðær wigan sittaþ on beorsele bliþe ætsomne.

Peorð is always play and laughter among the proud, where warriors sit together happily in the beer-hall.(our translation)

The stanza never says what a peorð is. The word is unknown outside this poem, which is why the rune's name is one of the standing unsolved problems in runology.

Attested in

Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.

Thames scramasaxRiver Thames, London · 10th century
Present in the row, giving the shape if not the meaning.

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 Peorð 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.

Common misconceptions

Claims about this rune that circulate widely and do not hold up.

Confident claims that peorð means a dice-cup, a womb or a lot-casting vessel are modern guesses presented as knowledge. The honest answer is that nobody knows.
ContestedPage 1999; Barnes 2012