How Scribes Invented the Letter W to Spell Barbarian Names

Danny Bate tells the story of the letter W in “A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W,” a book about how the /w/ sound earned its own spot in the alphabet. The account does not concern grace or refinement. It concerns scribes who could not spell the names they were paid to write.

Fall of the Western Empire

In the fifth century CE, the western portion of the Roman Empire broke apart. It fragmented into a jumble of fresh kingdoms. The causes behind this collapse are many, yet one major factor was the peoples who once resided beyond its borders. These were the foederati, groups tied by treaty to fight Rome’s enemies in exchange for land and food.

The Romans treated these leaders with disdain, referring to them as “barbarians,” yet they grew ever more dependent on them for military backing. It was only through the assistance of the foederati that the Romans were able to repel the threat of Attila the Hun in 451. As these regional leaders gained strength, however, the authority of the emperor and the central state eroded in kind. This process reached its peak with the overthrow of the last emperor in the west in 476.

Language Divide

The divide between Roman and barbarian included language as part of it. By the fourth and fifth centuries, the western empire had become overwhelmingly Latin-speaking. The newcomers, by contrast, spoke their own languages, and some of them may have had a passing knowledge of Latin as well. Many of these migrants spoke Germanic languages. One of these incoming tongues was the ancestor of English, and it arrived in the remains of Roman Britain during this era.

From southern Spain to the coasts of the North Sea, Germanic-speaking elites now held power. These new rulers sought to present themselves as rightful heirs to the emperors, and a great deal of continuity persisted in this tumultuous time. By maintaining the outward appearance of Roman rule and portraying themselves as good Romans, they could ease the envy of the old aristocracy and win over the people.

The new rulers did not demand that record-keepers use their own Germanic tongue for official papers. Instead, they gladly took up the more respected Latin language, which served them well in most cases. The trouble arose when a new king wished his scribes to compose a charter for some notable act of largess — and the scribes had no settled way to spell that king’s name.

The /w/ Problem

/w/ was one of the sounds that gave writers trouble. That sound is the common consonant in English water and want, and it would have existed in the names of Germanic kings like Clovis, Vitiges and Odoacer. The problem was that the Latin alphabet had no letter for that sound. When rulers of lands that used Latin writing bore names with sounds that didn’t exist in Latin, their scribes faced a problem whenever a new king wanted to have a charter drawn up for some grand display of generosity. The solution, eventually, was to invent one — a fused double U that gave us the letter we know today.

Even so, W became the accepted spelling for the Germanic sound /w/, showing up in Latin texts produced in England.

The Path to W

Back in olden days, the sound /w/ rang out everywhere across the waters of the Mediterranean. Both Latin and Ancient Greek used that sound, and both had letters set aside for spelling it. However, as we saw in Chapters F and U, the sound had since become strange to both languages. In Greek, the consonant and its letter Ϝ had faded away. In Latin, the letter V had come to stand for the fricative /v/ instead.

Across the Indo-European family of languages, the ancient sound /w/ was lost or changed. Continental Germanic languages joined this pattern later, and in German today, W represents a /v/ sound. The English consonant /w/, in contrast, is a rare holdout, kept from change by its move to the island of Britain.

Beginning in the sixth century, and probably first in the influential kingdom of Francia, scribes began writing U twice. Germanically named figures such as the abbot UUandeberctus and King UUaldemarus appear in Latin texts during this period. The two letters were progressively written together as -one, and by the 11th century, they had fused into the letter W as we know it.

This was long before the split of V and U into two separate letters, hence some modern disagreement over their offspring’s name. In the English alphabet, it’s called double U. For the French, it’s double vé.

From Francia to English Texts

The sound /w/ found its way into the alphabet of nearby lands that borrowed W from Francia’s own letter. It shows up in early English documents, though not without rivals. One such rival, used in Cædmon’s Hymn as described in Chapter U, was a single U. Scribes often chose that single U when the next vowel was an /u/. This method kept sequences of three Us from appearing in awkward succession.

This dislike of ‘triple U’ in medieval texts still shapes English spelling today. During the later Middle Ages, scribes replaced a U with an O after a W. The change was made for the sake of clarity when reading. Even when words had a short /u/ sound, spellings like wulf, wud and wunder would have been too confusing in the era of manuscript writing, given its crowded rows of upright quill strokes.

This avoidance technique can account for the current gap between sounds and spelling in wolf, wood and wonder. Still, W came to serve as the typical method for spelling the Germanic sound /w/, even in Latin documents produced in England.

One tenth-century account, telling of a holy man who served as a bishop, records the life of Saint Æthelwold. Written in Latin, the text relies on southern England as its setting, and it is filled with place-names built with the /w/ sound, including Winchester, Worcester and Wallingford. The saint’s name appears as Aðeluuoldus within the work.

Why This Matters

A king’s name drove scribes to invent the letter W, which came into being both as a result of the fall of Rome and through the coming together of languages in the post-classical world.

The tale of the letter W is one of languages running into each other. It tells of a sound that once spread across the Mediterranean, then vanished from Latin and Greek, only to be saved in English after it made its way to an island. It is also a chronicle of scribes who could not find a letter for the name of the king they served, and who remedied the problem by doubling one that was already in use.

1. The foederati, tied by treaty to fight Rome’s enemies, gained strength.
2. The emperor’s authority and the central state eroded.
3. The last emperor in the west was overthrown in 476.
4. Scribes in Francia began writing U twice.
5. By the 11th century, the fused double U had become the letter W.

The fall of Rome gave rise to the letter W. It is a tale about scribes who found a means.

Source material: “A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W,” Literary Hub.

alphabet history · book review · letter W · Old English · Roman Empire · v and u