The Heimdall Naming, Honestly Stated

The custom of naming this aett after Heimdall, the watchman god of Norse myth said in the Eddic sources to guard the approach to Asgard and to possess extraordinarily keen senses, is common in modern rune literature, sometimes explained by pointing to this aett's association with vigilance, protection and the trials of Hagalaz and Nauthiz that open it, yet as with the naming of the aett either side of it, this entry cannot trace the specific pairing of Heimdall with this particular group of eight runes to the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, or either surviving rune poem.

Some modern sources instead name this middle group Hagal's Aett, after its own opening rune rather than after any god at all, a naming with the advantage of staying closer to what the row itself actually shows, and the coexistence of both namings in circulation today is itself evidence that the god based scheme is a comparatively recent addition layered onto an older, purely structural division rather than an inherited part of the tradition with one settled, ancient form. What the medieval evidence supports without qualification is the row's division into three groups of eight and this group's own eight runes in their fixed order; the choice to call the group Heimdall's rather than Hagal's, or to name it for any god at all, belongs to twentieth century and later rune practice, stated here plainly rather than left for a reader to assume was always so.