The History of Designing

an Alphabet
Joannes Richter

Abstract
The History of Designing an “Alphabet” cannot be documented as long as we are unable to
understand the distribution of the letters in an “alphabet”. Therefore even if the distribution of
symbols had been garbled the designer must have known how to mix up and stir the soup of letters
to shuffle the symbols up to any loss of an ordered categorization. Any ordered and deliberately
disordered distribution of symbols requires a thorough knowledge of the alphabet's structure.
This report describes the discovery of the name DIAVS as a set of representative letters for the 5
linguistic categories: the lingual D, the palatal I, the guttural A, the labial V, and the dental S, which
in the Sefer Yetzirah are described as the vocal sound generations.
Sorting the runic symbols we may categorize all letters in the Latin and Hebrew alphabets. Sorting
the categories we may identify the words DIAVS, and (in Hebrew) IHV, respectively for the runes
TIAUS or ΘIAUS.
A slightly rearranged sequence of the linguistic categories DIAVS → DIVAS (*Tīwaz) allows the
direct access to the Germanic name “TIW” and in a reversed reading sequence “WIT” (“we two”).
In the Latin alphabet the 5 categories of the letters result in a divine Name DIAUS whereas the
Germanic requires a resorting of the categories to produce the divine Names D-I-V-A-S, and also
the sky-gods T-I-W and W-O-D (Wodan), Th-O-R and R-O-D.
The designing of the alphabet started at the insight of the 5 linguistic categories linguals, palatals,
gutturals, labials and dentals which in an optimized communication system each need (circa) 3
symbols to generate and understand the phonetic “trit” (trinary digit) in the information. The names
for the sky-gods such as “DIAUS” seem to be chosen from the 5 linguistic categories.
The initial section “Futhar”, respectively “Futhrk” of the Germanic runic sequences are used as a
template to generate various keywords such as divine names, personal pronouns etc., such as “wit”,
Vut, Tiw, “witan” (“wisdom”, “witness”, “wita”, “wise”, “witenagemot” “wiskunde”1)....

1 An Architecture for the PIE-Languages

The Investigation of the History of Designing an “Alphabet”
The History of Designing an “Alphabet” cannot be documented as long as we are unable to
understand the distribution of the letters in an “alphabet”. Therefore even if the distribution of
symbols had been garbled the designer must have known how to mix up and stir the soup of letters
to shuffle the symbols up to any loss of an ordered categorization. Any ordered and deliberately
disordered distribution of symbols requires a thorough knowledge of the alphabet's structure.
My study of the alphabet's structure started with a comparative analysis of the most important
words (the “ego-pronoun” as the personal pronouns “I” of the first person singular in English) in the
good old Swadesh lists. Unfortunately Morris Swadesh had decided to ignore the entries for the
sky-god. At an early stage of studies I identified the correlation between the sky-god's name Diaus
and the “ego-pronoun”. A set of Mediterranean dialects such as Provencal had been equipped with a
sky-god's name Diéu and a corresponding ego-pronoun “iéu” for which the correlation seemed to be
spread in most of the Romanesque languages2.
The family of Germanic languages did not show a correlation between the sky-god's name Diaus
and the ego-pronouns. Therefore I tested some other elements in Germanic languages and identified
the correlation between several sky-god's names and the dual form (in English: “wit”) of the
personal pronouns of the first person.
Especially the sky-god “Tiw” correlated to the mirrored dual form of the personal pronoun “wit”
(“we two”). Also noticed the impressive importance of the initial section of 5-6 letters of the
“Futhark”-sequence, which seemed to have been stable for centuries and a vast region of northern
Europe.
The analysis of the alphabetical letters and runes seemed to be problematic. The mechanisms of the
human voice are rather complex and hard to analyze.
In 2020 I started investigating the ternary encoding 3 in languages and re-investigated the Sefer
Yetzirah, in which I discovered the 5 categories of letters in the Hebrew alphabets 4. A footnote
helped me to categorize the 22 Hebrew letters. Obviously the Hebrew system categorized the letters
to the origin locations of the phonetic sounds. All 5 locations (tongue, palate, throat, lips and the
teeth) and the distribution of phonemes over the categories linguals, palatals, gutturals, labials and
dentals for vocal sound generations are described in the Sefer Yetzirah. The footnote explains:
Based on Rabbi Saadia Gaon's Judeo-Arabic commentary on “Sefer Yetzirah” (chapter
4, paragraph 3), wherein he describes the phonetic sounds of the 22 characters of the
Hebrew alphabet and classifies them in groups based on their individual sounds: “Aleph
( ‫)א‬, hé (‫)ה‬, ḥet (‫)ח‬, ‘ayin (‫ )ע‬are [guttural sounds] produced from the depth of the
tongue with the opening of the throat, but bet (‫)ב‬, waw (‫)ו‬, mim (‫)מ‬, pé (‫ )פ‬are [labial
sounds] made by the release of the lips and the end of the tongue; whereas gimel (‫)ג‬,
yōd (‫)י‬, kaf (‫)כ‬, quf (‫ )ק‬are [palatals] separated by the width of the tongue [against the
palate] with the [emission of] sound. However, daleth (‫)ד‬, ṭet (‫)ט‬, lamed (‫)ל‬, nūn (‫)נ‬,
tau (‫ )ת‬are [linguals] separated by the mid-section of the tongue with the [emission of]
sound; whereas zayin (‫)ז‬, samekh (‫)ס‬, ṣadi (‫)צ‬, resh (‫)ר‬, shin (‫ )ש‬are [dental sounds]
produced between the teeth by a tongue that is at rest.”5

2 The Hermetic Codex II - Bipolar Monotheism

3 A Ternary Encoding to Optimize Communications and Cooperation
4 The Composition of the Sky- God's Name in PIE-Languages
5 Footnote 6 in Modern Hebrew phonology - Wikipedia
Listing these 22 letters in a hierarchical overview I noticed the name DIAVS as a set of
representative letters for the 5 categories: the lingual D, the palatal I, the guttural A, the labial V,
and the dental S.
In the non-PIE language Hebrew I did not expect DIAVS as a symbolic keyword. However I knew
the human mechanisms to generate phonetic sounds were globally valid for all humans. The same
categorization of the letters also should be valid for Latin, Greek and all other PIE-languages, which
were known to share a PIE-sky-god Diaus.
From Communication and Information theory I knew each of the independent sources should be
equipped with (circa6) 3 levels for an optimized communication system. Originally I restricted my
ternary investigations to the archaic vowels, might have been limited to 3 frequency levels for the
letters A, I and U.
The human apparatus to produce sounds however consisted of 5 sources, which may require at least
5 x 3 letters for an optimal encoding of the phonetic information. I also knew the sequence F-U-Th-
R-K-H-N-I-A-S-T-B-L-M-(R) of the staveless runes and categorized the letters of this ensemble.

1: sequence of the staveless runes (simplified) F-U-Th-R-K-H-N-I-A-S-T-B-L-M-(R).

I compared the Latin and Hebrew alphabets with the 15 letters of the Staveless runes and identified
the name of the sky-god DIAVS in the Latin and Hebrew alphabet. As expected the same categories
in the Staveless runes generated a similar name for the sky-god TIAUS. The Sefer Yetzirah also
described a divine Name IHV.

# Linguistic sky- 19 basic letters 7 extra letters 3 extra sky- 15 letters

Category god Hebrew & Latin (Latin) letters (Hebrew) god Staveless runes
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2
1 5 Linguals D D L N T Th T Th N T L

2 6 Palatals I C I K Q G J (Ch) I K I

3 4 Gutturals A A E H O (Gh) A H A

4 8 Labials V B F M P U V W Y U F U B M

5 5 Dentals S Z R S Ts Sh S R S (R)

1 ? X
Table 1 Latin alphabet and extra Hebrew letters categorizing the letters and sorting the lines to
display the word DIAVS, and in Hebrew) IHV, respectively for the runes TIAUS or ΘIAUS.

A slightly rearranged sequence of the linguistic categories DIAVS → DIVAS (*Tīwaz) allows the
direct access to the Germanic name “TIW” and in a reversed reading sequence “WIT” (“we two”).

6 The superiority of the ternary numeral system is described in several sources. Theoretically the coding parameter is
optimized at the number e (mathematical constant) "Euler's number" (e ≈ 2.71828...)
All previously listed Latin, Hebrew and runic sequences seem to shuffle the categories of the
symbols. However we may notice an extraordinary deviation from the garbling tradition. The runic
sequence F-U-Th-R-K-H-N-I-A-S-T-B-L-M-(R) starts with two labials F-U. These two initial
elements F-U seemed to disturb the shuffling tradition of a garbled sequence. One of these letters
should be turned into a guttural, such as A, E, H, O or Gh.
In the Staveless runes an “A” is missing between -Th- and -R- and we may expect: W-O-Th- -R-K-
H-N-I-A-S-T-B-L-M-(R).
In the Younger Futhark we already have an “A/O” between -Th- and -R- and we may expect: W-I-
Th-(A/O)-R-K-H-N-I-A-S-T-B-L-M-(R).
These solutions allows us to list a short overview of the architecture of PIE-languages, in which we
use the following color codes for linguistic categories: linguals, palatals, gutturals, labials and
dentals.
In the Latin alphabet the 5 categories of the letters result in a divine Name DIAVS whereas the
Germanic requires a resorting of the categories to produce the divine Names D-I-V-A-S, and also
the sky-gods T-I-W and W-O-D (Wodan), Th-O-R and R-O-D.
• Tiw is equivalent to Týr ("*Tiwaz"), a Norse god (Tiw is the Old English spelling).
• Wod, Wut or Wot may be a shortcut for Wotan.
• Thor is a Nordic god. The runic name was spelled ᚦᚢᚱ (þur).
• Rod is an indirect, Slavic successor of the Indo-European god *Dyeus, who was "Lord of
Gods", "Lord of Heaven", "King of Gods".

Languages and Sorted Initial Letters 5 linguistic categories

Alphabets Letters Runic Sequence
PIE-sky-god sky-god
Diaus/Divas Vut/Wut/Tiw
Languages
1 Mediterranean D I A V S Lingual Palatal Guttural Labial Dental

2 Germanic D I V A S Lingual Palatal Labial Guttural Dental

T I W Lingual Palatal Labial

Alphabets
1 Younger Futhark F I Th A S Labial Palatal Lingual Guttural Dental
F I Th Labial Palatal Lingual
W I T Labial Palatal Lingual
Th O R Lingual Guttural Dental
D O R Lingual Guttural Dental
2 staveless runes F O Th R K Labial Guttural Lingual Dental Palatal

WO D Labial Guttural Lingual

Table 2 PIE-Sky-god names D-I-A-V-S, respectively D-I-V-A-S from the Mediterranean viewpoint
and Initial Letters for the Runic Sequence of the sky-gods T-I-W and W-O-D (Wodan), Th-O-R and R-O-D
The design of most European alphabets seems to be based on the pattern “A....I.....V”, starting with
an “A”, ending with an “Ω” and centered by an “I”.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4
Elder Futhark ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨᚱ ᚲ ᚷ ᚹ ᚺᚾ ᛁᛃᛇ ᛈᛉ ᛊᛏᛒᛖ ᛗ ᛚᛜ ᛟ ᛞ
Transliteration f uþar kgwhn ijæpz stbem lŋo d
Between the header ᚠ,ᚢ,ᚦ and the last symbol (d) the body of the Elder Futhark (a-r-k-g-w-h-n-i-
j-æ-p-z-s-t-b-e-m-l-ŋ-o) seems to be sharing this tradition.
The equal distribution of the runes according to their linguistic categories in the Elder Futhark
seems to be restricted to the first 5 symbols (ᚠ,ᚢ,ᚦ,ᚨ,ᚱ). The rest of the letters may have been garbled
without a specific plan for a structured design7.
• The double labial transliteration F or W respectively V and U for the first runic couple ᚠᚢ
does not the meet the pattern of 5 letters representing the 5 linguistic categories (1 guttural,
1 labial, 1 palatal, 1 lingual, and 1 dental) in the divine name DIAVS for the sky-god. One
solution suggests to modify the first rune ᚠ to a j- (or an ij-symbol?), which would provide a
palatal at the initial runic position. This topic is discussed in the essay A Suggested
Restoration of the 'Futhark'-Sequence.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4
Elder Futhark ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨᚱ ᚲ ᚷ ᚹ ᚺᚾ ᛁᛃᛇ ᛈᛉ ᛊᛏᛒᛖ ᛗ ᛚᛜ ᛟ ᛞ
Transliteration f uþar kgwhn ijæpz stbem lŋo d
Kylver Stone concept i uþar kgwhn ijæpz stbem lŋo d
Table 3 Futhark alphabet categorizing the letters: gutturals, labials, palatals, linguals, dentals.

7 A Suggested Restoration of the 'Futhark'-Sequence

Appendix – Published papers of J. Richter at Academia.edu
The (approximately) 150 following papers are sorted according to the initial upload date8 :

• The History of Designing an Alphabet (this paper)

• An Architecture for the PIE-Languages
• A Suggested Restoration of the 'Futhark'-Sequence (Scribd)
• The Composition of the Sky- God's Name in PIE-Languages
• The Ternary Codes in Language and Creation (Scribd)
• The Role of Saussure's Letter "E"
• The Optimal Number of Vowels in Languages (Scribd)
• A Ternary Encoding to Optimize Communications and Cooperation
• A Golden Box to Control the Lightnings
• The Ancient Lightning Rods around the Mediterranean Sea
• Die ältesten Blitz(ab)leiter am Mittelmeer (Scribd)
• Pyramids in the Role as Power Plants
• Piramides als energiecentrales (Scribd)
• The Role of the Pyramids in Melting Glass and Meta... (Scribd)
• The Architecture of the Younger Futhark Alphabet
• The Egyptian Drilling Technology (Scribd)
• The Sources for the IΩ- Pronouns
• Notes to Herodotus' Histories of IΩ, Europa and Medea
• The Role of Irrigation and Drainage in a Successful Civilisation
• De rol van de irrigatie en drainage in een succesv... (Scribd)
• Notes to Frazer's "Pausanias's Description of Greece"
• The Initials of European Philosophy
• Atlantis vormde 3400 jaar geleden een Helleens Delta-project
• The War against Atlantis
• The "Ego"-Root inside the Name "Thebes"
• The Role of the AEtts in the Futharc Alpabet
• The Reconstruction of a European Philosophy
• Traces of an old religion (The Root "Wit" in Wittekind)
• Woden (Wuþ) as the Designer and Author of the Futhark Alphabet
• Is the Core "Wut" in "Wutach" symbolizing "Wutan" ("Woden")
• The Bipolar Core of Germanic Languages
• Simon Stevin's Redefinition of Scientific Arts
• Simon Stevin's definitie van wetenschappelijk onderz
• De etymologie van de woorden met Wit-, Wita en Witan-kernen
• The "Vit"-Roots in the Anglo-Saxon Pedigree
• The Traces of "Wit" in Saxony
• King Chilperic I's letters (ΔΘZΨ) may be found at the beginning ("Futha") of the runic
alphabet and at the end (WIJZAE) of the Danish alphabet
• Aan het slot (WIJZAE) van het Deense alfabet en aan het begin ("Futha") van het
runenalfabet bevinden zich de letters (ΔΘZΨ) van koning Chilperik I
• The Role of the Ligature AE in the European Creation Legend
• A Concept for a Runic Dictionary

8 https://independent.academia.edu/JoannesRichter, respectively https://independent.academia.edu/richterJoannes

• Concentrating the Runes in the Runic Alphabets
• Traces of Vit, Rod and Chrodo
• De sleutelwoorden van het Futhark alfabet
• The Keywords of the Futhark Alphabet
• Het runenboek met het unieke woord Tiw
• A short Essay about the Evolution of European Personal Pronouns
• The Evolution of the European Personal Pronouns
• De miraculeuze transformatie van de Europese samenleving
• The Miraculous Transformation of European Civilization
• The Duality in Greek and Germanic Philosophy
• Bericht van de altaarschellist over de Lof der Zotheid
• De bronnen van Brabant (de Helleputten aan de Brabantse breuklijnen)
• De fundamenten van de samenleving
• De rol van de waterbronnen bij de kerstening van Nederland
• De etymologie van "wijst" en "wijstgrond"
• The Antipodes Mith and With
• The Role of the Dual Form in the Evolution of European Languages
• De rol van de dualis in de ontwikkeling der Europese talen
• The Search for Traces of a Dual Form in Quebec French
• Synthese van de Germanistische & Griekse mythologie en etymologie
• De restanten van de dualis in het Nederlands, Engels en Duits
• Notes to the Corner Wedge in the Ugaritic Alphabet
• The Origin of the long IJ-symbol in the Dutch alphabet
• Over de oorsprong van de „lange IJ“ in het Nederlandse alfabet
• The Backbones of the Alphabets
• The Alphabet and and the Symbolic Structure of Europe
• The Unseen Words in the Runic Alphabet
• De ongelezen woorden in het runenalfabet
• The Role of the Vowels in Personal Pronouns of the 1st Person Singular
• Over de volgorde van de klinkers in woorden en in godennamen
• The Creation Legends of Hesiod and Ovid
• De taal van Adam en Eva (published: ca. 2.2.2019)
• King Chilperic's 4 Letters and the Alphabet's Adaptation
• De 4 letters van koning Chilperik I en de aanpassing van het Frankenalfabet
• The Symbolism of Hair Braids and Bonnets in Magical Powers
• The Antipodes in PIE-Languages
• In het Nederlands, Duits en Engels is de dualis nog lang niet uitgestorven
• In English, Dutch and German the dual form is still alive
• The Descendants of the Dual Form " Wit "
• A Structured Etymology for Germanic, Slavic and Romance Languages
• The “Rod”-Core in Slavic Etymology (published: ca. 27.11.2018)
• Encoding and decoding the runic alphabet
• Über die Evolution der Sprachen
• Over het ontwerpen van talen
• The Art of Designing Languages
• Notes to the usage of the Spanish words Nos and Vos, Nosotros and Vosotros
• Notes to the Dual Form and the Nous-Concept in the Inari Sami language
• Over het filosofische Nous-concept
• Notes to the Philosophical Nous-Concept
• The Common Root for European Religions (published: ca. 27.10.2018)
• A Scenario for the Medieval Christianization of a Pagan Culture
• Een scenario voor de middeleeuwse kerstening van een heidens volk
• The Role of the Slavic gods Rod and Vid in the Futhorc-alphabet
• The Unification of Medieval Europe
• The Divergence of Germanic Religions
• De correlatie tussen de dualis, Vut, Svantevit en de Sint-Vituskerken
• The Correlation between Dual Forms, Vut, Svantevit and the Saint Vitus Churches
• Die Rekonstruktion der Lage des Drususkanals (published: ca. 27.9.2018)
• Die Entzifferung der Symbolik einer Runenreihe
• Deciphering the Symbolism in Runic Alphabets
• The Sky-God, Adam and the Personal Pronouns
• Notities rond het boek Tiw (Published ca. 6.2.2018)
• Notes to the book TIW
• Von den Völkern, die nach dem Futhark benannt worden sind
• Designing an Alphabet for the Runes
• Die Wörter innerhalb der „Futhark“-Reihe
• The hidden Symbolism of European Alphabets
• Etymology, Religions and Myths
• The Symbolism of the Yampoos and Wampoos in Poe's “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
from Nantucket”
• Notizen zu " Über den Dualis " und " Gesammelte sprachwissenschaftliche Schriften "
• Ϝut - Het Nederlandse sleutelwoord
• Concepts for the Dual Forms
• The etymology of the Greek dual form νώ (νῶϊ)
• Proceedings in the Ego-pronouns' Etymology
• Notities bij „De godsdiensten der volken“
• The Role of *Teiwaz and *Dyeus in Filosofy
• A Linguistic Control of Egotism
• The Design of the Futhark Alphabet
• An Architecture for the Runic Alphabets
• The Celtic Hair Bonnets (Published Jun 24, 2018)
• Die keltische Haarhauben
• De sculpturen van de Walterich-kapel te Murrhardt
• The rediscovery of a lost symbolism
• Het herontdekken van een vergeten symbolisme
• De god met de twee gezichten
• The 3-faced sculpture at Michael's Church in Forchtenberg
• Over de woorden en namen, die eeuwenlang bewaard gebleven zijn
• De zeven Planeten in zeven Brabantse plaatsnamen
• Analysis of the Futhorc-Header
• The Gods in the Days of the Week and inside the Futhor-alphabet
• Een reconstructie van de Nederlandse scheppingslegende
• The Symbolism in Roman Numerals
• The Keywords in the Alphabets Notes to the Futharc's Symbolism
• The Mechanisms for Depositing Loess in the Netherlands
• Over het ontstaan van de Halserug, de Heelwegen en Heilwegen in de windschaduw van de
Veluwe
• Investigations of the Rue d'Enfer-Markers in France
• Die Entwicklung des französischen Hellwegs ( " Rue d'Enfer "
• De oorsprong van de Heelwegen op de Halserug, bij Dinxperlo en Beltrum
• The Reconstruction of the Gothic Alphabet's Design
• Von der Entstehungsphase eines Hellwegs in Dinxperlo-Bocholt
• Over de etymologie van de Hel-namen (Heelweg, Hellweg, Helle..) in Nederland
• Recapitulatie van de projecten Ego-Pronomina, Futhark en Hellweg
• Over het ontstaan en de ondergang van het Futhark-alfabet
• Die Etymologie der Wörter Hellweg, Heelweg, Rue d'Enfer, Rue de l'Enfer und Santerre
• The Etymology of the Words Hellweg, Rue d'Enfer and Santerre
• The Decoding of the Kylver Stone' Runes
• The Digamma-Joker of the Futhark
• The Kernel of the Futhorc Languages
• De kern van de Futhark-talen
• Der Kern der Futhark-Sprachen
• De symboolkern IE van het Nederlands
• Notes to Guy Deutscher's "Through the Language Glass"
• Another Sight on the Unfolding of Language (Published 1 maart, 2018)
• Notes to the Finnish linguistic symbolism of the sky-god's name and the days of the week
• A modified Swadesh List (Published 12 / 17 / 2017)
• A Paradise Made of Words
• The Sky-God Names and the Correlating Personal Pronouns
• The Nuclear Pillars of Symbolism (Published 10 / 28 / 2017)
• The Role of the Dual Form in Symbolism and Linguistics (Oct 17, 2017)
• The Correlation between the Central European Loess Belt, the Hellweg-Markers and the
Main Isoglosses
• The Central Symbolic Core of Provencal Language (Oct 7, 2017)