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Couldn’t have chosen a more difficult (and ambiguous) name to pronounce, could you? It almost sounds like a curse that I often hear people say out in the bad streets of New York City.

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Elder [0] and Younger [1] Futhark (or Fuþark) are the name of two runic writing systems used by Germanic and Scandinavian Vikings. The name Futhark is a combination of the first 6 runes /f/, /u/, /ð/, /ɑ/, /r/, and /k/. Similar to how you get the name "alphabet" from the first two letters of Greek's writing system.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Futhark

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Futhark

i had only skimmed this link and not even wondered about the name - but learned the meaning serendipitously within 2 minutes when it popped up in the OTHER hackernews link i had opened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118478 which links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_runestones

Futhark appears in the first paragraph! i don't think i ever read the term before

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