Jera (also Jeran, Jeraz, Yera) is the conventional name of the j-rune ᛃ of the Elder Futhark, from a reconstructed Common Germanic stem *jēra-[1] meaning "harvest, (good) year".
[3] In the later period of the Elder Futhark, during the 5th to 6th centuries, connected variants appear, and these are the ones that give rise to the derivations in Anglo-Saxon (as ᛄ ger and ᛡ ior) and Scandinavian (as ᛅ ár) traditions.
This is an exception, shared with urus, due to the fact that neither the Latin nor the Greek alphabets at the time of the introduction of the Gothic one had graphemes corresponding to the distinction of j and w from i and u.
[3] When the n-rune had stabilized in its form during the 6th and 7th centuries, its vertical stroke slanted towards the right (), which made it possible to simplify the jēra-rune by having only one vertical stroke that slanted towards the left, giving the ᛅ ár-rune of the classic Younger Futhark (note however, that the earliest YF inscriptions, such as the Ribe skull fragment, still retain the earlier X-shape).
The development of the Jēran rune from the earliest open form was not known before the discovery of the Kylver Stone in 1903, which has an entire elder futhark inscription on it.