Upsilon - Correspondence With Latin Y

Correspondence With Latin Y

The usage of Y in Latin dates back to the first century BC. It was used to transcribe loanwords from Greek, so it was not a native sound of Latin and was usually pronounced /u/ or /i/. The latter pronunciation was the most common in the Classical period and was used by most people except the educated ones. The Roman Emperor Claudius proposed introducing a new letter into the Latin alphabet to transcribe the so-called sonus medius (a short vowel before labial consonants), but in inscriptions was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.

The name of the letter was originally just υ (y; also called hy, hence "hyoid", meaning "shaped like the letter υ"). It changed to υ ψιλόν, (u psilon, meaning 'simple u') to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same pronunciation. Four letters of the Latin alphabet arose from it: V and Y and, much later, U and W. In the Cyrillic script, the letters U (У, у) and Izhitsa (Ѵ, ѵ) arose from it.

In some languages (most notably German), the name upsilon (Ypsilon in German) is used to refer to the Latin letter Y as well as the Greek letter.