What ᚸ means
Gar gave readers a way to mark hard g separately.
The Futhorc was the expanded Anglo-Saxon rune row. Old English sound changes let the older rune Gyfu stand for both the hard g in “gift” and a y-like sound at the start of “yes”; Gar was added to make the hard sound clear.
Is Gar a Viking rune?
Gar belongs to the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, not a Scandinavian rune row.
The Futhorc was the expanded rune set used to write Old English. The Ruthwell Cross, a Christian stone monument, bears Gar around 750. A rune row in the Cotton Domitian A. ix manuscript is in a tenth-century hand, with Gar added in the eleventh or twelfth century. These records place it in Northumbrian English writing and manuscript learning, distinct from Scandinavian runic traditions.
Historical and specialist; it identifies Old English writing more reliably than a shared spiritual signal.
Part of the collection
Who writes ᚸ
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Related characters
2
Questions people ask
2Can I give Gar a spiritual meaning?
Yes, if you present it as your own reading. As of 2026, no standard divination meaning for Gar as a separate Anglo-Saxon rune is established.
Why does Gar look different in another font?
It can: the reader's font draws the text character's outline, so the rune's strokes may vary between fonts.
More like this
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How to type or find ᚸ
- Also called
- Gar rune · Gar
- Search it as
- Gar rune meaning · Old English rune · Futhorc · Anglo-Saxon rune · hard g rune
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.