Wynn (Ƿ ƿ) (also spelled Wen) 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
- Latin Capital Letter Wynn - Ƿ - U+01F7
- Latin Small Letter Wynn - ƿ - U+01BF
- Runic Letter Wynn - ᚹ - U+16B9
