The Secret Life Of The ‘W’…

The “W…”
Useful for all sorts of words like Wisdom, Welcome, Wonder and Wodehouse but did you ever wonder how we got the only letter in the alphabet with two syllables?… or indeed hints at its appearance?

More about this later but its ‘W’ shape is actually described in its name ‘Double U’.
"Hey? So how come it isn't double V?" Read on.

When we first adopted the the Latin Alphabet way back in the 7th Century to write English which was derived from German we had no J U or W. The tasks of "oo" and "uh" were delegated to the V. The problem with our English is that a letter that described the sound "WUH" simply didn't exist, so it was formed by typing "UU"

We English had a brief dalliance with the Runic alphabet and used a letter called Wyn which looked a bit like a 'p' but ultimately UU was gaining popularity elsewhere across Europe, so the wyn was consigned to history limping on until the 14th Century.

By the 8th Century UU had seriously caught on having all sorts of uses across the continent for German dialects and French names, or many words of Celtic or Germanic origin. Viking crusades along the way throughout history further spread the use of Germanic words into the French North. French Norman scribes introduced UU to England in the 11th Century (1066 and all that) and started to write these two characters in a ligatured (joined together form, in this case effectively squashed) form of UU. Sealing the fate of the Runic wyn.

With the advent of the printing press in the 15th century many publishers lacked the not so common Norman “ligatured UU” new character and switched it for what they did happen to commonly use... a ‘double’ VV or UU block. As printing progressed over hundreds of years the W shape we now recognise today was refined from the double V block which had become the standard.

So it's still called a ‘Double U’ in English as a result of the early roots of its evolution and not a ‘Double V’! Although in France interestingly they call it a doo-bluh-vay Double V!

We think it's a glorious flowing letterform that describes perfectly words like Wave, and Windswept - we’re so taken with it we use it as our distinctive monogram. We love good design and aesthetics and don't feel it should cost the earth either. Across all areas of business and the charity sector Wodehouse have delighted our clients with graphic design and direct mail solutions since 2003.

Why not Welcome Wodehouse to your Workplace and take away the Worry?

Thank you to the excellently written article by Amanda Kenney for making an idea for a post reality, without whose wonderful research the W would still be a mystery...

https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/blogue-blog/the-letter-w-eng#auteur-author