Wynn
Letter of the Old English alphabet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wynn or wyn[1] (Ƿ ƿ; also spelled wen, win, ƿynn, ƿyn, ƿen, and ƿin), is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound /w/. It was a continued use of the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc runes. Futhorc was the native alphabet of Old English before the Latin alphabet was adopted, and it was a sibling alphabet to the Younger Futhark alphabet that Old Norse used. Both alphabets come from Elder Futhark.
| Wynn | |
|---|---|
| Ƿ ƿ | |
| (See below) | |
| |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Adapted from Futhorc into Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic and logographic |
| Language of origin | Old English |
| Sound values | [w] /wɪn/ |
| In Unicode | U+01F7, U+01BF |
| History | |
| Development | ᚹ
|
| Time period | ~700 to ~1100 |
| Descendants | Ꝩ ꝩ |
| Sisters | Ꝩ ꝩ |
| Transliterations | w |
| Variations | (See below) |
| Other | |
| Associated graphs | w |
| Writing direction | Left-to-right |
| Name | Proto-Germanic | Old English |
|---|---|---|
| *Wunjō | Wynn | |
| "joy" | ||
| Shape | Elder Futhark | Futhorc |
 | ||
| Unicode | ᚹ U+16B9 | |
| Transliteration | w | |
| Transcription | w | |
| IPA | [w] | |
| Position in rune-row | 8 | |
History
The letter "W"
While the earliest Old English texts represent this phoneme with the digraph ⟨uu⟩, scribes soon revived the rune wynn ᚹ from Old English's native alphabet, Anglo-Frisian Futhorc, for this purpose. It remained a standard letter throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, eventually falling out of use during the Middle English period, circa 1300.[2] In Middle English texts, it was sometimes replaced with ⟨u⟩ or with a ligature form of ⟨uu⟩, until it was replaced with the modern letter ⟨w⟩.[3]
Meaning
The denotation of the rune is "joy, bliss", known from the Anglo-Saxon rune poems:[4]
ᚹ Ƿenne brūceþ, þe can ƿēana lẏt
sāres and sorge and him sẏlfa hæf
blǣd and blẏsse and eac bẏrga geniht.
— Lines 22–24 in the Anglo-Saxon runic poem
Who uses it knows no pain,
sorrow nor anxiety, and he himself has
prosperity and bliss, and also enough shelter.
— Translation slightly modified from Dickins (1915)
Unicode
The following wynn and wynn-related characters are in Unicode:[5]
- U+01F7 Ƿ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER WYNN
- U+01BF ƿ LATIN LETTER WYNN
- U+16B9 ᚹ RUNIC LETTER WUNJO WYNN W
- U+A768 Ꝩ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER VEND
- U+A769 ꝩ LATIN SMALL LETTER VEND
- U+A7D4 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE WYNN
- U+A7D5 ꟕ LATIN SMALL LETTER DOUBLE WYNN
Computing codes
| Preview | Ƿ | ƿ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER WYNN | LATIN LETTER WYNN | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 503 | U+01F7 | 447 | U+01BF |
| UTF-8 | 199 183 | C7 B7 | 198 191 | C6 BF |
| Numeric character reference | Ƿ | Ƿ | ƿ | ƿ |