Name and sound values
Kaun is a historically transmitted name of the rune and denotes ulcer or wound. In the Younger Futhark the sign could cover the sound values /k/g/.
Reducing the row from 24 to 16 signs meant that one rune wrote several different sounds. The correct reading therefore depends on vocabulary, grammar, and inscriptional context.
Historical use
Younger runes primarily served writing: on memorial stones, everyday objects, ownership marks, and short messages. Magical inscriptions exist, but they do not turn every rune into an independent magical sign.
The Norse rune poems
The Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems do comment on the sixteen Younger Futhark runes. They survive, however, only through medieval manuscripts and may transmit divergent imagery.
Both poem traditions describe illness and pain. The popular meaning “torch” belongs to the related Old English Cen rune.
Modern interpretation
Present-day practice may use Kaun as a symbolic field for “ulcer or wound”. Such reflection is modern; the rune poems offer images and mnemonics, not a complete surviving system for drawing individual oracle stones.
Rune poems in the original
Old Norwegian
Norwegian Rune Poem
Kaun er barna bǫlvan; bǫl gørver nán fǫlvan.The ulcer is the ruin of children; affliction makes a corpse pale.
A sense-based working translation. The second line is often an independent gnomic statement; a direct semantic link to the rune must not be assumed.
Old Icelandic
Icelandic Rune Poem
Kaun er barna böl ok bardaga för ok holdfúa hús.A sore is the bane of children, a mark of battle, and the house of rotting flesh.
The middle phrase is damaged in the transmission and is read differently by editors.