A well-attested pronominal prefix, the masculine singular pronoun “he” (SD/433). See the entry on
pronominal-prefixes for more discussion. Tolkien said that it had another variant
hu- (SD/433), but this variant was only appears in the early and rejected
hunekkū, which was changed to
unekkū (see
nakh-). Tolkien further indicated that the form
u- primitively had an initial consonant [ɣ] or [ʔ] that was lost (SD/433).