Earlier quoted context omitted.
The original cover of The Hobbit has runes running along the outside; the runes read "The Hobbit or There and Back Again, being the record of a journey by Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton compiled from his memoirs by JRR Tolkein and published by G?rge Allen and Unwin Ltd"[0]. I can read that because of my mum's books on doing fortune telling with Viking rune stones, which she kept near her statue of a Hindu god and some mag…
> published by G?rge Allen Obviously, it says George. (Knowing what an inscription means is actually an important real-world method of being able to read it!) The "Z" used by Tolkien there appears to be his own invention. The whole inscription is something of a mess; a few things are put into runes by sound, but mostly a fairly strict letter-to-letter transcription is used. This is especially bad in "published", whic…
Quite plausibly because, as you say, it's somewhat phonetic, given that's a silent "e".
And yes, it is indeed a mess, the futhark I learned had only "ᚲ" for both "c" and "k", while that text has a different symbol for each in "back".