Veda #32 : Double U

Day 32
"Why we called letter "W" with "double u", when in facts it looks more like "double v" ?"

W

Twenty-third letter of alphabet, W, pronounciated "double u", despite the facts that it looks more like two v's standing together. Okay, in Indonesia we called it "We", but how did this "W" ended up with "double u" ?

The history itself goes all the way back to the 11th century.
After the Norman invasion of Britain, the Anglo-Saxon language was written down using Roman letters.
The Roman alphabet doesn't have a W. It doesn't have a V, either, but what looks like a V is actually their U. In Rome it was often carved as V to avoid the difficult-to-carve rounded bottom.

When the English adopted the 23 letters of the Roman alphabet a long time ago, they decided they needed a new letter to pronounce the W sound, so they made a "double U" with the Roman V, They paired together two U's (at that time, it was like "VV" that makes a W). But, they didn't call it "double U" they called it "wyn" first time, and it looked sort of like a P with a short leg, not like the W we used to know. The usage of this symbol makes it more biased and look similar with alphabet "P" that already formed before.

Then, the French came along and adopted the W again. They weren't content with that, however, and sort of made it into a combination of W and G, which is why we have words like "warranty" and "guaranty" that mean the same thing. At any rate, they re-imported W into the English language in 1066, and the English set it back to the old Roman combination.