Wynn
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2008-07-11T04:36:08Z
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{{dablink|This article is on the letter. For other uses, see [[Wynn (disambiguation)]].}}
{{RunicChars}}
[[Image:Wynn.svg|125px|thumb|Capital ''wynn'' (left), lowercase ''wynn'' (right)]]
'''Wynn''' ({{latinx|Ƿ ƿ}}) (also spelled Wen or {{unicode|ƿ}}en) was a letter of the Old [[English alphabet]]. It was used to represent the sound {{IPA|/w/}}.
While the earliest [[Old English language|Old English]] texts represent this phoneme with the [[Digraph (orthography)|digraph]] <uu>, scribes soon borrowed the rune ''wynn'' [[Image:Runic letter wunjo.png|24px|w]]({{runic|ᚹ}}) for this purpose. It remained a standard letter throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, eventually falling out of use (perhaps under the influence of French orthography) during the [[Middle English]] period, circa 1300 (Freeborn 1992:25). It was replaced with <uu> once again, from which the modern <[[w]]> developed.
The denotation of the rune is "[[:wikt:joy|joy]], [[:wikt:bliss|bliss]]" known from the Anglo-Saxon [[rune poem]]:
:{{runic|ᚹ}} ''{{lang|ang|Ƿenne bruceþ, ðe can ƿeana lyt<br/>sares and sorge and him sylfa hæf<br/>blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.}}''
: Bliss he enjoys who knows not pain,
: sorrow nor anxiety, and himself has
: prosperity and bliss and a good enough house. <!-- see [[rune poem]] -->
{{Wunjo infobox}}
It is not continued in the [[Younger Futhark]], but in the [[Gothic alphabet]], the letter {{script|Goth|𐍅}} ''w'' is called ''winja'', allowing a [[Proto-Germanic language|Proto-Germanic]] reconstruction of the rune's name as '''*wunjô''' "joy".
It is one of the two [[Runic alphabet|runes]] (along with [[Thorn (letter)|þ]]) to have been borrowed into the [[English alphabet]] (or any extension of the [[Latin alphabet]]). A modified version of the letter {{unicode|ƿ}}ynn called [[Vend (letter)|Vend]] was used briefly in [[Old Norse]] for the sounds {{IPA|/u/}}, {{IPA|/v/}}, and {{IPA|/w/}}.
As with [[þ]], ƿynn was revived in modern times for the printing of Old English texts, but since the early 20th century the usual practice has been to substitute the modern <w> instead due to ƿynn's visual resemblance to [[P]].
=== {{unicode|Ƿ}}ynn in Unicode and HTML Entities ===
{|
| Latin Capital Letter Wynn
| class="Unicode" | Ƿ
| [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/01f7/ U+01F7] and &#503;
|
|-
| Latin Small Letter Wynn
| class="Unicode" | ƿ
| [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/01bf/ U+01BF] and &#447;
|-
| Runic Letter Wynn
| {{runic|ᚹ}}
| [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/16b9/ U+16B9] and &#5817;
|}
== References ==
{{reflist|2}}
{{refbegin}}
* Freeborn, Dennis (1992). ''From Old English to Standard English''. London: MacMillan.
{{refend}}
==See also==
*[[Meldorf fibula]]
{{Runes}}
[[Category:Old English language|Wynn]]
[[Category:Runes]]
[[Category:Palaeographic letter variants|Wynn]]
[[als:ᚹ]]
[[br:Wynn (lizherenn)]]
[[cs:Wunjo]]
[[de:Wunjo]]
[[es:Wynn]]
[[fr:Ƿ]]
[[it:Wynn]]
[[nl:Wunjo]]
[[ja:Ƿ]]
[[no:Ƿ]]
[[pl:Ƿ]]
[[ru:Вуньо]]
[[zh:Ƿ]]