Wynn - Definition and Overview

Wynn (Ƿ ƿ) is a letter in the old English alphabet that came from a rune (ᚹ) by the same name. It was used to represent the sound /w/.

In written Old English and Middle English it was borrowed to represent the same sound, as the letter W was a later invention. It gradually fell out of use as 'uu' (hence "double-U" for our modern "w") and later a merged form 'w' increased in use to represent the /w/ sound.

The rune is called wynn "joy, bliss" in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem:

ᚹ Wenne bruceþ, ðe can weana lyt

sares and sorge and him sylfa hæfþ

blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.

Bliss he enjoys who knows not suffering,

sorrow nor anxiety, and has

prosperity and happiness and a good enough house.

It is not continued in the Young Futhark, but in the Gothic alphabet, the letter 𐍅 w is called winja, allowing a Proto-Germanic reconstruction of the rune's name as wunjô "joy".

It is the only rune other than þ to have been borrowed into the Latin alphabet.

Wynn in Unicode