Name	Proto-Germanic	Old English		Old Norse
	*Ūruz/*Ūrą	Ūr	Ȳr	Úr	stung Úr
	"aurochs"/"water"	"aurochs"	?	"windy, cold drizzle/snowfall" "dross"
Shape	Elder Futhark	Futhorc		Younger Futhark
Unicode	ᚢ U+16A2	ᚢ U+16A2	ᚣ U+16A3	ᚢ U+16A2	ᚤ U+16A4
Transliteration	u	u	y	u	y
Transcription	u	u	y	u,o,y,œ w /v	y,œ v
IPA	[u(ː)]	[u(ː)]	[y(ː)]	[u]ⓘ [ø]ⓘ [y]ⓘ [œ]ⓘ [v]ⓘ [w]ⓘ	[y]ⓘ [œ]ⓘ [v]ⓘ
Position in rune-row	2	2	27	2₁	2₂

This article containsrunic characters. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of runes.

Ur is the recorded name for theruneᚢ in bothOld English andOld Norse, found as the second rune in allfutharks (runic alphabets starting with F, U, Þ, Ą, R, K), i.e. theGermanic Elder Futhark, theAnglo-Frisian Futhark and theNorse Younger Futhark, with continued use in the latermedieval runes,early modern runes andDalecarlian runes.

It corresponds to the letteru in theLatin alphabet, but also carries other sound values, especially in Younger Futhark, were its sound values correspond to the vowels:[u]^ⓘ,[ø]^ⓘ,[y]^ⓘ and[œ]^ⓘ etc., and the consonants:[v]^ⓘ and[w]^ⓘ etc., in the Latin alphabet.

The character ᚢ may have been derived from theOld Italic scripts, as such features various characters corresponding toelder runes, including both upside and downside characters forUpsilon (/u, y/): , , specifically theEast Rhaetic alphabet from theMagrè-region of north-east Italy, which primarily used the downside Old Italic Upsilon.

The character was later reused as the 16th letter in theGothic alphabet (𐌿), the corresponding name beingurus.

The rune is recorded in all threerune poems (Old English, Norwegian, Icelandic), and it is calledUr in all, however with different meanings in each.^[1]

Because of this, it is difficult toreconstruct aProto-Germanic name for theElder Futhark rune. It may have been*ūruz "aurochs" (see alsoBull worship), based on theOld English rune poem, the oldest recorded of the three, supported by the corresponding Gothic nameuraz, recorded byAlcuin of York in the 8th century, or*ūrą "water", based on theIcelandic rune poems (and to some extent theNorwegian rune poem),^[2] with both Proto-Germanic words, however, possibly stemming from the same root.^[3]

The aurochs name is preferred by authors of modern runic divination systems, but both seem possible, compared to the names of the other runes: "water" would be comparable to "hail" and "lake", and "aurochs" to "horse" or "elk" (although the latter name is itself uncertain). TheGothic alphabet seems to support "aurochs" as the prior name, though: as the name of the letter𐌿u isurus.

In theOld English rune poem, recorded in the 8th or 9th century, the rune is namedŪr,Old English for “aurochs” (compare withOld Norse:úrr),^[3] stemming from aProto-Germanic word:*ūruz.

Old English rune poem

TheOld Norse name is variously recorded asUr, meaning some type of cold damp and windyprecipitation weather, but the definition warries slightly between theNordic languages.

InOld Icelandic, the wordúr is recorded as meaning "drizzle", "light rain" and thereof, in the sense of "cold and damp weather".^[4][5][6] InOld andContemporary Swedish, the word (ur) essentially means "blustery and profusesnowfall,sleet orrain" etc, if not outright "bad weather".^[6] TheGotlandic variationstarur ("starling-ur") specifically refers to the last snowfall of the season.^[7] InDanish andNorwegian, the word (ur) is said to mean "northern rainclouds",^[6] or just "rainclouds", but also "cold, biting draft" and thereof etc.^[8]

There is also a variant,ýr (yr), in all Nordic languages, meaning "drizzle" in Old Icelandic,^[9] including "fine dense snowfall" and "snowstorm" in Norwegian and Swedish.^[10][11] A derivative,yra, a verb, also exist, meaning "to drizzle" and thereof in Old Icelandic,^[9][12] and "swirl, whirl, drift", in the sense of snow, sand, dust affected by the wind, in Swedish, etc.^[13]

Úr is related toOld English:ēar, "wave, sea", potentially also "urine".^[6] It stems from aProto-Germanic word:*ūrą, possibly begun by a w-, as found in related words (Swedish:var, "pus",Old English:wær, "sea") and historical variants ofúr (Old Swedish:vur),^[6] as Proto-Germanic words starting with aw, followed byo oru, generally lost thew-sound when evolving fromProto-Norse intoOld Norse (compareProto-Germanic: *wulfaz, "wolf",Old Norse:ulfr).^[14]

TheNorwegian rune poem is the earliest recorded Norse rune poem, recorded in the 13th century. It records the name asúr, but with a unique sense not recorded elsewhere, with theOld Norwegian meaning of "dross,slag". This sense is obscure, but may be anIron Age technical term derived from the word for water (compare theKalevala, whereiron is compared to milk).

In theIcelandic rune poems, recorded in the 16th century, the rune is namedúr, describing some type of cold damp and windyprecipitation weather.

There are several Icelandic manuscripts with rune poems, all varying to some degree. The oldest manustript, catalogued asAM 687 d 4°, is from around 1500. The second oldest, catalogued asAM 461 12°, is from around 1550. These have been noted to be hard to read, thus the transliterations might be incorrect.^[15]

AM687d, written around 1500, has lost a lot of readability due to the pergament being folded and damaged over the years, but copies have been made since the 18th century.^[16] The original scribe useddiacritic abbreviation symbols to save space,^[16][17] which are hard to make out at a first glance.^[18] These symbols are based on periodArabic numerals,^[17] but are hard to identify, yet appear to be the following, or thereof: -r⁰, -ar¹, -ur², -er³, -re⁴/-ræ⁴, -ra⁵.^[18][16] The poem ends with a Latin phrase of unknown meaning.

Below, an attempt at recreating the original text with availableUnicode-characters is shown, as to convey how hard the original text is to read.^[18] Letter sequences that cannot now be identified are inserted, for convenience of reading, within square brackets [ ], on the evidence either of the available space or of related texts.^[16]

AM461 is slightly younger than AM687d, written around 1550, and less complete, lackingᛦ [Ýr] for example. It has been noted by American Old Norse scholarJackson Crawford to be very difficult to make out.^[15]

TheAnglo-Frisian Futhark has a modified Ūrᚢ, fitted with a detached vertical line in the cavityᚣ, which was given the sound value[y]^ⓘ. It was namedȲr and corresponded to the lettery in theLatin 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.

In the 11th century, a new writing rule was introduced to theYounger Futhark, in the form ofstung runes (also calleddotted runes), in whichstings, i.e. dots, could be added to a rune to indicate a secondary sound value.

Thestung Úrᚤ primarily carried the sound value[y]^ⓘ and corresponds to the lettery in theLatin alphabet (unicode name:Runic Letter Y), but it also carries the sound value[œ]^ⓘ and seldom even[v]^ⓘ, the latter of which was also carried by thestung Féᚡ (unicode name:Runic Letter V). During this late Younger Futhark period, the sound value [y] was synonymously carried by the runeYrᛦ, as its previous sound value,[ʀ]^ⓘ, was given to the runeReiðᚱ. In the followingmedieval runic alphabet, the sound value[œ]^ⓘ was covered by its own rune, a reversedÓssᚯ (unicode:Runic Letter Oe).

Stung runes are not separate runes from their base form in the Futhark order and thus has the same positions as their main counterpart. In the medieval runic alphabet they instead has the position of their corresponding Latin character.