Jera is the twelfth rune of the Elder Futhark, fourth in the second aett, carrying the phoneme "j" or "y." Its reconstructed name means year, and specifically the good year or harvest. The rune poems associate it with the season when the earth yields its fruit and effort is rewarded, an image of natural cycles and of results that ripen in their own time. Its two-part form is sometimes read as the turning halves of the year.
Jera stands fourth in the aett of Hagal. Its Old English futhorc counterpart, ger, meaning year or harvest, receives a stanza in the Old English Rune Poem describing the year as a joy to men when God, holy king of heaven, allows the earth to yield its bright fruits to rich and poor alike. Jera survived into the Younger Futhark as ar, and appears in both the Norwegian and Icelandic Rune Poems, likewise associated with a good or plentiful year.
Runologists reconstruct the Proto-Germanic form behind the name as *jērą, part of the comparative linguistic evidence, alongside cognate vocabulary across the older Germanic languages, used to establish the name's original sense independent of the later rune poems themselves. Jera's two-part shape, sometimes drawn as two interlocking angular forms, has invited more than one proposed reading among runologists, none settled beyond dispute.