Henrik Williams, "the origin of the runes"

 Williams, Henrik. “The Origin of the Runes.” Amsterdamer Beitrage Zur alteren Germanistik 45 (1996) 211-218.

at first glance it is easy to see how the runes came from the latin alphabet, if you look for example at symbols 17 and 18 for example, it is very easy to see that those symbols could have been derived from the latin t and b, you will find that these symbols represent the exact same phones as t and b respectively.

            That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues with this theory, rune 23 for example looks much more like the Greek Omega, and rune 8, which looks exactly like a P, instead represents the phone w. on top of those anomalies it is very difficult to figure out the origin of all the other symbols, some of them can be explained, but why were there so many changes made?

            There are three main camps of thought on the origin of runes, the first and currently most popular is the latin origins. This makes sense especially considering the cultural exchange that was going on between Germanic tribes, and Rome. The second theory is that Futhark is derived from the Greek alphabet, there is some evidence for this in the very runes, both rune 8 and rune 23 look similar to Greek letters. (it should be noted that rune 8 makes the w phone, where as in Greek it makes the r phone) lastly there are some who think the Runes were derived from the Etruscan alphabet.

            All prominent theories agree that the futhark msut be derived from a Mediterranean alphabet, but why haven’t we been able to come up with a conclusive answer? the fit between the form of a rune and its expected sound value is usually bad, none of the current theories can seem to explain this. The second issue is that the symmetry between the runic system and the letter inventory of the supposed classical source.

            To illustrate the difficulty of figuring out the origin of Futhark we can look to the rune 7 (looks like X) the phoneme for which is [g]. if futhark was derived from the Greek alphabet, why would they use the Greek letter chi (x) to represent the phone of the Greek letter gamma. The logic here is that if they used the Greek Gamma it would be in danger of getting confused with the rune 1. The main issue as you can see if that futhark is very similar to other alphabets, but not similar enough to make any one explanation fit right.

            Most likely futhark was developed around the birth of Christ, give or take a century. Given this timeline the most likely progenitors of futhark are Romans.

            When we examine the form of futhark we see that each rune is usually comprised of a vertical line, with lines coming off of it. You will notice that there is a total absence of horizontal lines. Theories suggest that this has to do with the nature of runes, they were most often carved, and because a horizontal line could easily be lost in the grain of wood, horizontal lines were discouraged. This is not a proven theory, but it does help provide insight into the shape of the runes. The strokes that are attached to the vertical lines never seem to go above or below the vertical lines. If we examine the latin alphabet, to make comparisons we must keep the rules of futhark form in mind, to explain differences.

            Below is a comparison between the form of the futhark, and the Roman alphabet. Not all of the symbols match up with the phones of the latin progenitor, but you can see where the ideas for each of these symbols was come up with. These derivatives were assumed because of the form rules of futhark.

one thing to keep in mind when pondering the change of futhark compared to original latin alphabet. The original latin alphabet has 5 superfluous letters(K, Q, X, Y, Z) the latin alphabet also does not recognize 8 phones from the Germanic languages.

these differences in phonemes would, and did create serious problems for the Germanic peoples who were adapting an alphabet to their language, it appears they made up for it by redesignating the phones of many latin letters. Another confusing bit is the organization of the futhark. The phonemes in futhark are in a very different order then the Latin alphabet, suggesting that after its initial creation, futhark was taken far from Roman influence. Without direct roman influence the futhark was probably reorganized to facilitate easier memorization, using poetry of some kind.

It is most likely that futhark is derived from the roman alphabet, using all 23 letters from the roman alphabet, with the invention of one German grapheme. It is also possible that after runes left the direct cultural influence of Rome, it was reorganized, and some how, if by mistake or some other reason, the graphemes were switched in certain cases. This does seem a bit far fetched, but it is by no means impossible.