Mannaz
The Elder Futhark rune for the “m” sound. Its name, *mannaz, meant man, a human being.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *mannaR, Old Norse maðr, “human being, man”. The Norse rune poems give man a sober description: in the Norwegian poem man “is an augmentation of the dust”, and in the Icelandic poem the “delight of man and augmentation of the earth and adorner of ships”. The Old English poem says that man “is dear to his kinsmen”, yet every man must fail his fellow, since the Lord will give the flesh to the earth.
Origin and history
The rune could stand for its own name. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary says it “is sometimes used instead of writing the word man”, and Bruce Dickins notes that the character for M is used this way “fairly often in the Lindisfarne Gospels”.
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. 59 and note; Norwegian poem 14; Icelandic poem 14
- mann (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 “mann”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research