Actually, the Greek alphabet had no letter for /j/ and there was no /j/ in the Greek of that time, and the Latin letter I stood for /i/ as well as /j/. So the Runic /j/-letter was an obvious choice. The Latin V was ambiguous, unlike the runic /u/-grapheme.
Both the letter forms and phonetic facts can be used as evidence against monogenetic theories. There are many other alphabets derived mainly from Greek that also have a few letters of different origins, e.g. Coptic (DB 287), Armenian (DB 366) and Glagolitic (DB 347), the script from which the Cyrillic was derived.
Braune, Wilhelm. 1981. Gotische Grammatik. Mit Lesestücken und Wörterverzeichnis. 19. Aufl., neu bearbeitet von Ernst A. Ebbinghaus. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Vlg.
Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. 1996. The world's writing systems. NY and Oxford: OUP 1996. (=DB)
Important note about the alphabet table below: The Unicode encodings for Gothic script were not a part of the official Unicode standard at the time of this writing. They may need to be revised once Gothic script is standardized.
Character | Name |
---|---|
𐌰 | Asha |
𐌱 | Bairkan |
𐌲 | Giba |
𐌳 | Dags |
𐌴 | Aihvus |
𐌵 | Qairthra |
𐌶 | Iuja |
𐌷 | Hagl |
𐌸 | Thiuth |
𐌹 | Eis |
𐌺 | Kusma |
𐌻 | Lagus |
𐌼 | Manna |
𐌽 | Nauths |
𐌾 | Jer |
𐌿 | Urus |
𐍀 | Pairthra |
𐍁 | Ninety |
𐍂 | Raida |
𐍃 | Sauil |
𐍄 | Teiws |
𐍅 | Winja |
𐍆 | Faihu |
𐍇 | Iggws |
𐍈 | Hwair |
𐍉 | Othal |
𐍊 | Nine Hundred |
See also Gothic language