Ingwaz
The Elder Futhark rune for the “ng” sound. It is named for Ing, a god or hero whom the English rune poem places among the East Danes.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *ingwaR, Old Norse Ing, a Norse god’s name, and says the rune could be used to write ng. The Old English poem tells a small story: Ing “was first seen by men among the East-Danes”, and then “followed by his car, he departed eastwards over the waves”.
Origin and history
Bruce Dickins connects Ing with the Ingwine, a name for the Danes in Beowulf, and with the Swedish royal line: their god Frey “is himself styled Yngvi-Freyr”. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary glosses ing as “the name of the nasal guttural ᛜ ng, in the Runic alphabet”.
Write in runes
stringmash.comRune translatorTurn English into Elder Futhark, Younger Futhark or Anglo-Saxon runes, with a chart of all 24 Elder Futhark runes.See also
Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raido, Kaunan, Gebo.
Sources
- Runer (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon, Runenavn (table of rune names)
- Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples, Bruce Dickins (ed. and trans.), 1915, Cambridge University Press (Internet Archive), Anglo-Saxon poem v. 67 and note
- ing (Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary), Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898), online edition, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, entry “ing”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research