Wynn

Wynn
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.

Last updated December 05, 2025

This article contains runic characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of runes.

Name	Proto-Germanic	Old English
	*Wunjō	Wynn
	"joy"
Shape	Elder Futhark	Futhorc
Shape
Unicode	ᚹ U+16B9
Transliteration	w
Transcription	w
IPA	[w]
Position in rune-row	8

Wynn in the Hildebrandslied manuscript (830s): the text reads wiges warne. Hildebrandslied2. wynn rune.jpg — Wynn in the *Hildebrandslied* manuscript (830s): the text reads *ƿiges ƿarne*.

Wynn or wyn^[1] (Ƿ ƿ; also spelled wen, win, ƿynn, ƿyn, ƿen, and ƿin), not to be confused with P, 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.

History

The letter "W"

While the earliest Old English texts represent this phoneme with the digraph ⟨uu⟩, scribes soon revived the rune wynnᚹ 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]

ᚹǷenne 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) Wynn.svg — Capital wynn (left), lowercase wynn (right)

The following wynn and wynn-related characters are in Unicode:^[5]

U+01F7ǷLATIN CAPITAL LETTER WYNN
U+01BFƿLATIN LETTER WYNN
U+16B9ᚹRUNIC LETTER WUNJO WYNN W
U+A768ꝨLATIN CAPITAL LETTER VEND
U+A769ꝩLATIN SMALL LETTER VEND
U+A7D4꟔LATIN CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE WYNN
U+A7D5ꟕLATIN 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

References

↑ "wyn" . Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press.(Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
↑ Freeborn, Dennis (1992). From Old English to Standard English. London: MacMillan. p. 25. ISBN 9780776604695.
↑ Blake, Norman, ed. (1992). "Phonology and Morphology". The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press. p. 36. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521264754.003. ISBN 9781139055536.
↑ Dickins, Bruce (1915). Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 14–15.
↑ "UCD: UnicodeData.txt". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved November 22, 2022.