Old English letters: æ, þ, ð and ƿ, and how to type them

The four special letters

Old English was written in the Latin alphabet with a few additions. Ash (æ) combines a and e. Thorn (þ) and eth (ð) both stand for the th sound. Wynn (ƿ) stands for w. Early writing also used runes, but from about the eighth century the Latin alphabet took over.

How they sound

Æ was a short a, close to the vowel in modern “cat.” Þ and ð are used almost interchangeably, sometimes by the same scribe. The sound was voiced, like the th in “this,” between voiced sounds, and voiceless, like the th in “thin,” elsewhere. Ƿ is the sound of w, as in “wine.”

What modern editions change

Editors often swap ƿ for a plain w, because it resembles p. Editors also add macrons, such as ā, ē, ī, ō and ū, to mark long vowels. Manuscripts do not have macrons. That is why this site’s Old English output uses macrons and why reverse lookup accepts text without them.

The “ye olde” y

Thorn survived into early printing, but printers who lacked the letter used a y instead. That is where “ye olde shoppe” comes from: the y is a stand-in for thorn, so “ye” was said “the.”

How to type them

The simplest route is to copy from the translator output. To type them yourself, use the character codes below.

• Unicode: æ U+00E6, þ U+00FE, ð U+00F0, ƿ U+01BF. Capitals are Æ U+00C6, Þ U+00DE, Ð U+00D0, Ƿ U+01F7.
• Windows: hold Alt and type 0230 for æ, 0254 for þ, and 0240 for ð on the number pad.
• Mac: Option plus the apostrophe key types æ on a US keyboard. For þ and ð, use the Character Viewer from the Edit menu.
• Phones: copy and paste from the translator, or add an Icelandic keyboard, which includes þ, ð and æ.

Typing without the special letters

In this site’s reverse mode you can type ae for æ and th for þ or ð, and leave off macrons. The lookup normalizes your text and finds the same word.