Why ‘W’ Isn’t Called ‘Double-V’

Along with the many quirks and exceptions to English language rules there are many fossilized relics that leave us wondering. Take the letter “W,” for instance, which is pronounced “double-U,” despite looking more like two “V’s” smushed together, and which has a sound unique from either “U” or “V.” This dissonance between how the letter “W” looks and sounds stems from changes made to the Latin alphabet around the time that Old English appeared.

We’ll get to that in a bit, but first let’s go back to ancient Rome, where there was no letter “W” (nor a letter “U”) in the Latin alphabet. Instead, Romans used the letter “V” to represent two sounds: the vowel sound /u/ and the consonant sound /v/. This is why if you look at ancient Roman monuments, you’ll often see the letter “V” etched in stone where the letter “U” would make more sense to the modern English ear. It was also easier to etch sharp angles into stone than curved shapes, but we’ll touch upon the form of the letters again later.

Sometime during the third century CE, Germanic tribes in northern Europe developed a runic alphabet, which featured symbols for the /u/, /v/, and /wuh/ sounds. There was feoh (ᚠ) for any /f/ or /v/ sounds, ūr (ᚢ) for the /u/ sound, and wynn (ᚹ) for /wuh/. This runic alphabet inadvertently highlighted various ways in which the Latin alphabet came up short — namely that it lacked distinct letters for /u/ and /wuh/ sounds.

When Old English came around in the fifth century, it relied on a runic alphabet before switching to a Latin-inspired alphabet around the seventh century. But while the original Latin alphabet used by Romans had a “V,” that letter was missing from the earliest alphabet used among Old English speakers. Instead, they relied on the letter “F” to produce those /v/ sounds. There was also a new letter used to replicate /u/ sounds — the “U” shape we know today.

However, there was still no letter to represent a /wuh/ sound, at least initially. Scribes decided that rather than invent an entirely new letter, they could repurpose the letter “U” as an effective way to replicate a /wuh/ sound in written text. In an interview with Reader’s Digest, English professor Michael Adams noted how it was common historically to use extant letters rather than to create new ones. “We search for ways of representing the sounds with the letters we’ve got,” Adams said, “rather than increasing the number of letters.”

And so scribes began writing “UU” whenever there was a /wuh/ sound. This was briefly swapped out for the runic wynn symbol around the eighth century CE, but the “UU” returned after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Normans preferred using Roman and Greek-inspired alphabets, shunning the runic letters of northern Europe. The “UU” shape was aptly known as “double-U,” even though it would soon be replaced by the “VV” shape.

If you look at early handwritten manuscripts from medieval times, you’ll probably see many instances of “UU,” as it was simpler for scribes to write that shape by hand. But the opposite was true for the Romans: It was easier to carve angular shapes into stone than curved ones. Angular letter shapes also proved to be preferential after the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. So, if you look at printed materials from the medieval era, “VV” is far more common, as typographists preferred using that shape.

As the printing press became more widespread, so too did the shape “VV” for the letter “double-U.” But despite this typographical shift, nobody seemed interested in changing the pronunciation of the letter. The vocalization stayed as “double-U” while the “VV” shape was popularized around the world.