Pam, in addition to what others have so ably related, consider the name of "w" . . . which has an interesting history of its own. _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V#Letter_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V#Letter) -- beginning with idea of letter "v"! Good hunting, Judy Pam Vestal writes: I agree with everything that was said about using original sources, but want to mention that I have run across documents from the 17th century in which the letter "u" was consistently transcribed with a "v".