Hwair

The name of the Gothic letter is recorded by Alcuin in Codex Vindobonensis 795 as uuaer. The meaning of the name {{lang|got|ƕair}} was probably "cauldron, pot"cognate with Sanskrit {{IAST|caru}} "pot"); see e.g. Karl Ljungstedt, Anmärkningar till det starka preteritum i germanska språk (1887), p. 165. Hans Jensen, 00Die Schrift in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 1935, p. 38 Kratylos vol. 1-2, 1956, p. 175.

(cf. {{lang|got|ƕairnei}} "skull");Mark 15:22 {{lang|got|ƕairneins staþs}} = {{lang|grc|κρανιου τοπος}} "Golgatha". comparative reconstruction shows {{lang|ine-x-proto|kʷer-}} ("a kind of dish or pot") in Proto-Indo-European.

There was no Elder Futhark rune for the phoneme, so that unlike those of most Gothic letters, the name does not continue the name of a rune (but see Qairþra).

Gothic {{lang|got|ƕ}} is the reflex of Common Germanic {{lang|gem-x-proto|xʷ}}, which in turn continues the Indo-European labiovelar {{lang|ine-x-proto|kʷ}} after it underwent Grimm's law. The same phoneme in Old English and Old High German is spelled hw.

The Gothic letter is transliterated with the Latin ligature of the same name, {{not a typo|ƕ}}, which was introduced by Wilhelm Braune in the 1882 edition of {{lang|de|Gotische Grammatik}},{{cite work|lang=de|first=Wilhelm|last=Braune|title=Gotische Grammatik, mit einigen Lesestückchen und Worterverzeichnis|year=1882|url=https://archive.org/details/gotischegrammat03braugoog|pages=vi-vii}} as suggested in a review of the 1880 edition by Hermann Collitz,{{cite journal|lang=de|first=Hermann|last=Collitz|title=W. Braune, Gotische Grammatik. Mit einigen Lesestückeu und Wortverzeichnis. (Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte, I.) Halle, Niemeyer, 1880. VII und 118 s. 8. M. 2|journal=Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie|volume=12|year=1881|pages=480-482|url=https://archive.org/details/zeitschriftfrdph12berluoft/page/480/mode/2up}} to replace the digraph hv which was formerly used to express the phoneme, e.g. by Migne (vol. 18) in the 1860s. It is used, for example, in Dania transcription. It was also used to represent the voiceless labial–velar fricative {{IPAblink|ʍ}} in a 1921 edition of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

• {{IPA|ʘ}} : IPA letter bilabial click
• Ԋ ԋ : Komi Nje, a letter in the Molodtsov alphabet
• Ꙩ ꙩ : Cyrillic letter monocular O
• ん : N (kana)
• Խ խ : Armenian Khe

Note that the Unicode names of the Latin letters are different: "Hwair" and "Hv".{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0180.pdf |title=Latin Extended-B: Range: 0180–024F |work=The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0 |year=2010 |publisher=Unicode Inc |access-date=2011-10-15 |pages=21, 18}}

• Phonological history of wh
• Wh (digraph)

{{reflist}}

{{Latin script}}

Category:Latin-script letters

Category:Palaeography

Category:Gothic writing