The title may have caught your eye. The third character in the title is neither a ‘b’ nor a ‘p’ but looks like a combination of both. This character, ‘þ’, is named “thorn” and is part of an alphabet known as futhorc. It is used to represent the hard “th” sound that is in the words “think” and “thin”. Futhorc gets its name from its first 6 characters. (When I first read that I thought “Wait. There are 7 letters.” then I remembered that it’s the first 6 fuþorc charaters)
In other posts, I’ve mentioned that I’ve done some reading on the origins of the alphabet and that the English had temporarily imported some characters from another alphabet called futhorc.
This left me puzzled. So far, I had found that the varied alphabets that are used by western civilization were connected. The Semites had created an alphabet inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs. This led to Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic alphabets. The Greek alphabet led to the Etruscan alphabet which led to the Roman one which we (mostly) use today. Where did futhorc come from?
When I took an English class in 2012, I was asked to do an essay that involved doing some research. I figured that it would be a good excuse to find out more about futhorc
Despite being told by my instructor that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of knowledge, I went there to look up the letter thorn. Wiki agreed with what I already knew: the thorn character came from Anglo-Saxon runes and that these runes are also known as futhorc.
One difficulty that I had was that my assignment required that I interview someone who could tell me about this subject. I didn’t know anyone who knew more than I did. I mean, I was sure that there were folks who knew more about this than me. I just didn’t know them. Fortunately, my instructor, Gordon Bordewyk, was good enough to put me in contact with Professor James Vanden Bosch of Calvin College. After exchanging emails about what I was looking for, I phoned Professor Vanden Bosch on 11/28/2012.
Professor Vanden Bosch confirmed my findings on Wikipedia: the thorn character came from the futhorc script. He also told me that futhorc is usually pronounced as foo-thorc with a hard or non-voiced theta sound. That is, it uses the sound from ‘think’ and ‘thin’ instead of ‘this’ and ‘that’. Futhorc was developed as a runic script which means that it is carved using lines of differing lengths. Futhorc is different enough from the Roman alphabet to mean that it didn’t grow out from it. However, there are enough similarities to indicate that those who developed futhorc were familiar with the Roman alphabet. The wynn, thorn, and eth symbols (Ƿ ƿ, Þ þ, Ð ð) were borrowed from futhorc to represent sounds that Old English used but weren’t in the Roman alphabet. These characters appeared around the fifth or sixth centuries and disappeared after the Norman invasion.
I asked Professor Vanden Bosch about my initial sources for this research: David Sacks’ Letter Perfect and John Man’s Alpha Beta. He told me that he had read them and assured me that they were accurate.
I searched the Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) library website databases for information on the history or origin of the futhorc alphabet but I came up empty. What few mentions that futhorc got did not discuss where it came from or how it got involved with the English version of the Roman alphabet.
A search of Google led me to a variety of crackpot sites that discussed the magical aspects of runes. Since these sites were promoting the use of magic, I couldn’t take their historical information seriously. However, a sideways step to http://books.google.com led me to more useful sources.
A Biography of the English Language by Celia M. Millward and Mary Hayes offered some useful information. “Before the Christianization of England, the little writing that was done in English was in an alphabet called the futhorc or runic alphabet. The futhorc was originally developed by Germanic tribes on the Continent and probably was based on Etruscan or early Italic versions of the Greek alphabet.” (42)
A Biography of the English Language also discusses how some characters came from futhorc to the Old English version of the Roman alphabet. “Two runic characters were also incorporated into the Latin alphabet to represent sounds not occurring in Latin; thorn (þ), used for /θ/ and /ð/: and wen (ƿ), used for /w/.” (95)
Millward’s and Hayes’ work also documents that the origin of the name futhorc comes from its first six letters – fuþorc. (445)
Another source found on http://books.google.com was Benjamin W. Fortson’s Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. This work documents that futhorc was an offshoot of futhark which covered a variety of Germanic scripts. (348) Futhark was found to be two alphabets. “The older one, often called the Elder Futhark, had twenty-four characters and is mostly attested from Denmark. An offshoot of this was modified into the futhorc of England and Friesland around 500. Beginning around the sixth century the Elder Futhark started changing, evolving into the younger Futhark, which only had sixteen characters (the result of sound changes that allowed some of the older letters to be dispensed with) and became fully established by the ninth century.” (349)
Fortson also documents a scholarly dispute about the origin of the runes that fathered the futhark scripts. “Some scholars, especially in Scandinavia, view them as having been invented in the north and based on the Latin alphabet. However, there are more striking similarities between early runes and certain ‘Old Italic’ alphabets in use in northern Italy, particularly a Raetic alphabet found in Bolzano in the extreme north (Tirol).” (349)
As trite as it sounds, I’m going to use a river analogy for our alphabet. The alphabet’s source is with the Semite workers who borrowed Egyptian hieroglyphs to symbolize the initial sounds of the pictures. As the alphabet flowed to the Middle-East, it forked into Phoenician, Arabic and Hebrew. It flowed into Greece, to Etruria and then to Rome to become the Latin alphabet.
From my research, I’ve found that this river split off near Etruria and Rome to create the fork named Runes and then Futhark. Futhark then split off to create the futhorc alphabet of the English and Frisians.
As the Latin alphabet was introduced to England, futhorc seemed to become a tributary of the Latin alphabet by adding the thorn (Þ þ), eth (Ð, ð), winn (Ƿ ƿ) and yogh (Ȝ ȝ).
“The use of the Anglo-Saxon letters would gradually cease after the Norman Conquest of England in A.D. 1066. The change came due to pressure from the Norman-educated clergy and teachers, who sought to give written English a more ‘proper’ Franco-Roman form.” (Letter Perfect 309)
Instead of making a permanent contribution to the Latin alphabet, the futhorc letters were only an eddy.
Works Cited
Fortson, Benjamin W. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.
Man, John. Alpha Beta: How 26 Letters Shaped the Western World. New York: Wiley, 2000. Print.
Millward, Celia M. and Hayes, Mary. A Biography of the English Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1989. Print.
Sacks, David. Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z. New York: Broadway, 2004. Print.
Vanden Bosch, James. “History of Futhorc.” Telephone interview. 28 Nov. 2012.
Less-than-credible sources
“Thorn (letter).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Jan. 2012. Web. 01 Dec. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)>.
“Anglo-Saxon Runes.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Jan. 2012. Web. 01 Dec. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_runes>.
Stephen Squire 