W, or w, is the twenty-third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is double-u,[in 1] plural double-ues.[1][2]
Double-u, whose name reflects stages in the letter's evolution when it was considered two of the same letter, a double U, is the only modern English letter whose name has more than one syllable.[in 2] It is also the only English letter whose name is not pronounced with any of the sounds that the letter typically makes in words, with the exception of H for some speakers.
Some speakers shorten the name "double u" into "dub-u" or just "dub"; for example, University of Wisconsin, University of Washington, University of Wyoming, University of Waterloo, University of the Western Cape and University of Western Australia are all known colloquially as "U Dub", and the automobile company Volkswagen, abbreviated "VW", is sometimes pronounced "V-Dub".[3] The fact that many website URLs require a "www." prefix has been influential in promoting these shortened pronunciations.[citation needed]
In other West Germanic languages, its name is monosyllabic: German We /veː/, Dutch wee /ʋeː/. In many languages, its name literally means "double v": Portuguese duplo vê,[in 3] Spanish doble ve (though it can be spelled uve doble),[4][in 4] French double vé, Icelandic tvöfalt vaff, Czech dvojité vé, Estonian kaksisvee, Finnish kaksois-vee, etc.
The classical Latin alphabet, from which the modern European alphabets derived, did not have the "W" character. The "W" sounds were represented by the Latin letter "V" (at the time, not yet distinct from "U").
The sounds /w/ (spelled ⟨V⟩) and /b/ (spelled ⟨B⟩) of Classical Latin developed into the voiced bilabial fricative /β/ between vowels in Early Medieval Latin. Therefore, ⟨V⟩ no longer adequately represented the voiced labial-velar approximant sound /w/ of Germanic phonology.