Gothic letters and the runes
Gothic is the oldest substantially recorded Germanic language, which makes it the closest thing to a check on any reconstructed rune name. It is also weaker corroboration than it is usually made to look, and the reason why only needs understanding once.
Gothic keeps turning up in rune entries on this site (under fehu, gebo and ansuz in particular), always with a qualification attached. This page is the qualification, set out once, so those entries do not each have to make the argument from scratch.
Why Gothic matters at all
No Elder Futhark rune name is recorded anywhere. Every one is reconstructed by working backwards from the later traditions, and the traditions available are Old English, Old Norse and Gothic. Gothic is the valuable one, because it is the earliest Germanic language recorded at any length: a 4th-century Bible translation, several centuries older than anything in English or Norse. A Gothic word is closer to the language the runes were named in than any other evidence there is.
Gothic is the oldest substantially attested Germanic language. Where an ordinary Gothic word survives that matches a reconstructed rune name, that is solid support for the reconstruction.
The alphabet is not runic
First a distinction that gets lost constantly. The Gothic alphabet is not a runic alphabet. It was devised in the 4th century by Wulfila, a Gothic bishop of Cappadocian Greek descent, specifically to translate the Bible. Most of its letters correspond visibly to Greek ones; r, s and f look Latin instead.
Whether runes contributed anything is argued. Cercignani has proposed that Wulfila started from a 24-letter fuþark and matched most of its letters to Greek equivalents, reshaping them. Snædal argues the opposite emphasis: Greek first, some Latin, and only minor and uncertain runic influence. A handful of individual letters (q, h, þ, j, u, ƕ, o) have Greek, Latin and runic derivations all proposed for them.
How much the Gothic alphabet owes to runes is unresolved, and the proposals range from "it began as a fuþark" to "runic influence is minor and uncertain". Anyone stating flatly that Gothic derives from runes, or that it does not, is picking a side.
Where the Gothic letter names come from
The Gothic letters have names, and those names look like rune names. That is the interesting part, and it is also where the trouble starts, because the names are not recorded in any Gothic source. They come from a single manuscript: Codex Vindobonensis 795, compiled at Salzburg around AD 798 around a collection of Alcuin's letters, which carries both the Gothic letter names and an Anglo-Saxon Futhorc.
| Letter | Name in the manuscript | Ordinary Gothic word usually read behind it | Rune it parallels |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | aza | *ans, "god"; no singular is attested | ansuz |
| b | bercna | baírkan, "birch" | berkanan |
| d | daaz | dags, "day" | dagaz |
| f | fe | faihu, "possessions, money" | fehu |
| g | geuua | giba, "gift" | gebo |
The caveat that changes the weight
Cercignani has argued that the names in that manuscript may themselves be shaped by Old English and Old High German: that a Continental scribe copying a Gothic alphabet three or four centuries after Gothic stopped being spoken was working from, and partly through, the traditions he already knew. His conclusion is that the original Gothic letter names are simply unknown.
If the Gothic letter names are partly a Continental scribal reconstruction, they cannot independently corroborate a rune name reconstructed from Old English and Old Norse: they may be downstream of the same traditions. This is why this site treats Gothic letter names and ordinary Gothic words as two different grades of evidence.
The distinction in practice
Gothic runic inscriptions are a separate question
None of the above is about runes cut by Goths, which is a much thinner file. There are roughly a dozen candidate inscriptions usually described as East Germanic, and only three are widely accepted as Gothic.
| Object | Date | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Ring of Pietroasele, Romania | c. AD 400 | gutani … wi hailag, in fifteen Elder Futhark runes. Found 1837 and damaged in 1875, so the reading depends partly on earlier records. |
| Spearhead of Kovel, Ukraine | Early 3rd century | tilarids, cut right to left. Read as East Germanic on the strength of its nominative -s ending, which Proto-Norse would not have. |
| Spearhead of Dahmsdorf-Müncheberg, Brandenburg | Found 1865 | ranja. Accepted as Gothic on similar linguistic grounds. |
These are ordinary Elder Futhark inscriptions whose language is East Germanic. They tell us that Goths used runes; they say nothing about the Gothic alphabet, which Wulfila built separately and which one suggestion holds he kept clear of runic forms precisely because runes carried pagan associations.
What to take from this
- The Gothic alphabet is not runic. It is a 4th-century Greek-based script made for a Bible translation.
- Gothic words are good evidence. They are the oldest Germanic vocabulary recorded at length, and they support several reconstructions.
- Gothic letter names are weaker evidence. They survive in one 8th-century Continental manuscript and may be shaped by Old English and Old High German.
- Gothic runic inscriptions are a third thing again: three accepted objects, in the ordinary Elder Futhark, unrelated to Wulfila's alphabet.
Questions this guide answers
- Is the Gothic alphabet a runic alphabet?
- No. It was devised in the 4th century by Wulfila to translate the Bible, and most of its letters derive from Greek. How much it owes to runes is disputed, with proposals ranging from a fuþark starting point to only minor and uncertain runic influence.
- Do Gothic letter names prove the Elder Futhark rune names?
- They support them, but less strongly than is usually implied. The names survive only in Codex Vindobonensis 795, compiled at Salzburg around AD 798, and Cercignani argues they may be shaped by Old English and Old High German, in which case they are not independent evidence.
- Did the Goths use runes?
- Yes, but the surviving record is small. About a dozen inscriptions are candidates and three are widely accepted: the Pietroasele ring, the Kovel spearhead and the Dahmsdorf spearhead. They use the ordinary Elder Futhark, not the Gothic alphabet.
- Why does this site keep hedging on Gothic?
- Because two different things get cited under one name. An ordinary Gothic word attested in Wulfila's Bible is solid support for a reconstruction. A Gothic letter name from a much later Continental manuscript is not the same kind of evidence, and the entries say so.
Sources
Full references on the sources page. Our methodology explains the evidence labels used throughout.