Wynn

This article is about the letter. For other uses, see Wynn (disambiguation).

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 Ƿ ƿ
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
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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

Wynn in the Hildebrandslied manuscript (830s): the text reads ƿiges ƿarne.

Capital wynn appears twice in this 10th century inscription in Breamore: her sƿutelað seo gecƿydrædnes ðe (Here is manifested the Word to thee).

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

Capital wynn (left), lowercase wynn (right)

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 ꟔ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE WYNN
• U+A7D5 ꟕ LATIN SMALL LETTER DOUBLE WYNN

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	Ƿ		ƿ
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER WYNN		LATIN SMALL 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