Ѡ

Ѡ (lower case ѡ) is a letter in the early Cyrillic alphabet. It corresponds to the Greek letter omega , but is no longer used today because it redundant to О is. In the Old Church Slavonic alphabet the letter had the name ѡтъ ( ot ), the name Omega for the Cyrillic letter came into use later.

Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic letter Ⱉ can be classified as the earliest version of the Omega . This letter was in the 25th position of the Glagolitic alphabet and looked like a modified version of the О. Unlike the Greek, however, the Ⱉ was identical in the debate with the О, both were / ⁠ ɔ ⁠ / pronounced. The letter had a numerical value of 700 in the Glagolitic number system .

Cyrillic alphabet

This state did not change in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Ѡ was still redundant to the О, so that it was mainly used as a numerical symbol for the number 800 in the Cyrillic number system . In words, even those of Greek origin, the О was preferred. The sorting of the Ѡ in the alphabet was ambiguous: some sorted it with or after the О, others at the very end of the alphabet, before the nasal vowels.

In later texts the Ѡ appeared mainly as a stylistic device instead of an О. It had two different shapes: the Ѡ, which looks like a W, and the Ꙍ, which looks vaguely like an upside-down Greek omega. Based on the Ꙍ, the additional letter Ѽ, which stands for the expression “O!”, Was created.

Based on the Omega, the letter Ѿ, a vertical ligature of Omega and Т, was also created. This letter was mainly used as a preposition.

Character encoding

Unicode encodes all named variants separately:

• The W-shaped omega, Ѡѡ
• The "pretty" Omega, Ѽѽ
• The ligature Ot, Ѿѿ
• The "broad" omega, Ꙍꙍ

default		Uppercase Ѡ	Minuscule ѡ	Uppercase Ѽ	Minuscule ѽ
Unicode	Codepoint	U + 0460	U + 0461	U + 047C	U + 047D
	Surname	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA	CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OMEGA	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO	CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH TITLO
UTF-8		D1 A0	D1 A1	D1 BC	D1 BD
XML / XHTML	decimal	Ѡ	ѡ	Ѽ	ѽ
	hexadecimal	Ѡ	ѡ	Ѽ	ѽ

default		Uppercase Ѿ	Minuscule ѿ	Uppercase Ꙍ	Minuscule ꙍ
Unicode	Codepoint	U + 047E	U + 047F	U + A64C	U + A64D
	Surname	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER OT	CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER OT	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BROAD OMEGA	CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BROAD OMEGA
UTF-8		D1 BE	D1 BF	EA 99 8C	EA 99 8D
XML / XHTML	decimal	Ѿ	ѿ	Ꙍ	ꙍ
	hexadecimal	Ѿ	ѿ	Ꙍ	ꙍ

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic in TeX and Unicode ( Memento of March 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 482 kB)
2. ↑ Proposal to encode additional Cyrillic characters in the BMP of the UCS (PDF; 5.3 MB)