I was just thinking...

[valkommened]

...if a "w" is called "double-u", why isn't "m" called "double-n" or "reflected-n"? "W" is the ONLY letter in the alphabet with a more-than-one-syllable title and calling it a "double-u" seems really halfass to me, like the English alphabet inventor guy just couldn't think of anything better to call it. But how hard can letter-naming possibly be

Comments

[valkommened]

Oh, and isn't "w" more often a "double-v" than a "double-u" under the majority of fonts?! It's maaadness.

[erinplusone]

as you know, in the latin language, the v letter was pronounced closer to u or w sound, and they had no v sound. thats why 'Brutus' is spelled BRVTVS in Latin. thats why Veni Vidi Vici was probably pronounced more like "When-y Weed-y Week-y" instead of how it is today. so later on, when the romans introduced their alphabet to us germanic barbarians they found that we had a v sound in our languages and they used that letter for that sound, but we also have a w sound so they originally wrote it as vv or uu. after time they decided to make it a letter that stood by itself. if you think thats weird, look in a spanish book. they have a letter 'ch' and their alphabet goes a,b,c,ch,d. now thats crazy.

[valkommened]

Hmm...that's interesting. I knew you were just the guy to come through with this information. I figured it would naturally have to be the result of some sort of snafu in the original Latin carryover like the one you just explained, but I still think it's fascinating that #1) "w" was apparently the sole "mutant-with-an-unofficial-name" to develop out of that (you'd think a lot of similar inconsistencies would have led to the same type of thing elsewhere in the alphabet), #2) it actually became integrated as "double-u" instead of "double-v" (especially now that you've confirmed the origin of its appearance as clearly coming from latin "v" character, which even though it may have sounded like a "u" in latin, is still a "v" to us), and #3) that somewhere along the line, there were no attempts made by any of the English-speaking countries to modify w's name (to "wuh") in an effort to further formalize the English alphabet for the sake of continuity and consistency. That, of course, leads to the question of what other languages with "w"

[erinplusone]

also,
in spanish w is called 'doble v' or double v.

[erinplusone]

also,
in french, the y is called 'y grec' which means Greek Y, because they dont use y's barely besides transliterating borrowed words.