Old English Latin alphabet

The Old English Latin alphabet was a set of about 24 letters used for writing Old English from the 8th to the 12th centuries. Most of these letters came from the Latin alphabet, but two were changed versions of Latin letters, called Æ and Ð. Two more letters came from an older writing system called the runic alphabet, known as Ƿ and Þ.

Letters like Q and Z were rarely used except in names from other languages. The letter J had not been created yet, and K was sometimes used but not always. The letter W started to appear later, especially after the Norman influence, but it was written as a special joining of two letters rather than as a single letter. Different old books arranged these special letters in slightly different ways, but they all came after the regular Latin letters.

History

Old English was first written using Anglo-Saxon runes in the 5th century. In 597, the Gregorian mission brought the Latin alphabet back to Britain, where it was used to write English for the first time. The earliest examples were in law codes, including one from 616 for King Æthelberht of Kent.

During the 8th century, a new style of writing called half-uncial was introduced by the Hiberno-Scottish mission. This was later replaced by insular script. By the end of the 12th century, this was replaced by Carolingian minuscule, and spelling began to shift toward the Old French alphabet, leading into Middle English.

The letter eth ⟨ð⟩ was a changed form of the Latin ⟨d⟩. The letters thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ came from the Futhorc runic alphabet. There was also a symbol for the word "and," looking like the number seven (⟨⁊⟩, called ond or a Tironian et_), still used today in Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Sometimes, macrons ⟨¯⟩ were placed over vowels to show they were long.