Othala
The Elder Futhark rune for the “o” sound. Its name meant inherited land, the family estate.
Meaning
The reconstructed name is *ōþila, Old Norse óðal, “odel, property”, according to Store norske leksikon. The Old English poem, where the name is ethel, describes the estate: it “is very dear to every man, if he can enjoy there in his house whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity”.
Origin and history
Bruce Dickins notes that the English ethel was originally the name of the o letter, and that the rune could stand for the word ethel, homeland, in manuscripts such as Beowulf. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary glosses the English name as “one’s native country”. The drawing follows the plain form of the early inscriptions.
Write in runes
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- Next in Elder Futhark runesFehuThe rune for the 'f' sound, named for cattle, and by extension wealth.
- The same shape in Lunar New Year symbolsUpside-down fu (福)The character 福 (fu, “good fortune”) pasted upside down at Lunar New Year. It is a pun: “upside down” (倒, dào) sounds like “arrived” (到, dào), so an upside-down fu announces that good fortune has arrived.
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. 71 and note
- éþel (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 “éþel”
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from diamonds or letters and numbers.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 30, 2026. How we research
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