is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark e rune , meaning "horse" (cognate to Latin , Gaulish , Tocharian B , Sanskrit , Avestan and Old Irish ). In the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, it is continued as (properly , but spelled without the diphthong to avoid confusion with "yew").
The Proto-Germanic vowel system was asymmetric and unstable. The difference between the long vowels expressed by e and ï (sometimes transcribed as and ) was lost. The Younger Futhark continues neither, lacking a letter expressing e altogether. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc faithfully preserved all Elder futhorc staves, but assigned new sound values to the redundant ones, futhorc expressing a diphthong.
In the Gothic alphabet, the names of the runes were re-applied to letters derived from the Greek alphabet. The name of the Gothic letter (e) is attested as eyz, which has been interpreted as the Gothic word * () "horse" (note that in Gothic orthography, represents monophthongic /e/).
The rune may have been an original innovation, or it may have been adapted from the classical Latin alphabet's E, or from the Greek alphabet's H.
The Old English rune poem has: