How the letter w rose from the fall of Rome
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Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Germanic peoples migrated into former Roman lands, bringing their languages with them. When scribes tried to write these Germanic names in Latin, they encountered a problem: the Latin alphabet lacked a letter for the /w/ sound common in Germanic tongues.
Latin speakers had once used letters for that sound, but those letters had fallen out of use.
To represent /w/, scribes began doubling the letter U, first appearing in texts from around the sixth century in Francia, a region encompassing parts of modern France and Germany. This practice spread to England, where it competed with the rune wynn, a native symbol for the same sound. Ultimately, the doubled U, which became the letter W, prevailed, aided by its use in French and Latin texts. However, the story of W doesn’t end there.
The letter also altered how vowels were pronounced. The /w/ sound rounded following vowels, changing their qualities over time. While spellings often haven’t kept pace with these shifts, English speakers still recognize the effect of W in words like “wash” and “warm,” which don’t quite rhyme with “ash” and “arm” due to this rounding. The letter’s journey reflects a complex interplay between language, writing, and cultural change.
