Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wanderingstan 1434 days ago
Only “wrong” in light of current usage, but not historically.

By this measure, the English name of “W” would be wrong because it’s not actually a “double-U” but a “double-V”. But at the time of the letter’s formation, U and V were not yet separate letters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W

1 comments

The Swedes get this "right", and call it [ˈdɵ̂bːɛlˌveː].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet

In Dutch it's even more sane, the alphabet just goes V = vee, W = wee.
Oh wow, didn’t know that!
French as well, although the elegance gained is quickly tarnished by calling y "Greek i".