From: Séamas Ó Brógáin (leabhair@iol.ie)
Date: Sun Mar 28 2004 - 05:26:58 EST
John Cowan wrote:
> That reminds me. The name of the circumflex accent is obviously
> derived from Greek, but its form is not. Is it in fact the degenerate
> descendant of the letter "s", does anybody know?
No. When accent marks (probably in fact tone marks) were first applied
(retrospectively) to Classical Greek the circumflex accent was
curved---exactly like an upside-down breve, in fact. Hence the name, or
so I have always assumed. You can see this form in some older fonts. It
has also been made identical to the tilde, but I'm pretty certain the
upside-down-breve is the original form.
Séamas Ó Brógáin
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