From: andersa@Riga.DoCS.UU.SE (Anders Andersson)
Subject: A-ring (was: Norwegian Alphabet)
Organization: Uppsala University, Sweden
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 00:54:01 GMT

In article <1992Sep7.195212.2614@boole.uucp>, John@boole.uucp (John Ahlstrom) writes:
> For about 15 years there has been a scavenger hunt* in Silicon Valley	
> to find the word in Norwegian that is the name for the little circle
> above the A in the character (some character, I don't know then
> name of the character either) that starts the name of Angstrom.

Leaving its proper name aside for a moment, I'd like to point out
that the letter sometimes known as 'A-ring' was introduced in the
Swedish alphabet in the 16th century, about the time when Sweden
achieved independence from Denmark (and Norway), which had come to
dominate the Union of Kalmar.  It then replaced the older spelling
"aa", which had come to be pronounced similarly to "o" in Swedish.

The old 'double A' remained in use in Danish and Norwegian until the
early 20th century, when first Norwegian, and later Danish, started
to use this originally Swedish letter (the 19th-century physicist
Anders Angstrom, who was concerned with spectroscopy, came from the
general area of Ange in central Sweden).  Thus, I think you should
start by asking us what we called our invention, and, lacking a good
answer, only then ask the Norwegians or the Danes whether they might
have invented a word for this thing (the Norwegians are comparably
good at inventing native words for imported goods)... :-)

Anyway, I'm afraid I have to give you the maybe disappointing answer
that we (in Sweden) don't have any catchy name for this particular
little circle.  In Swedish, you may call it "ring" or "cirkel", and
those words are of course not limited to this mere diacritic...  The
letter as such is known by it's vowel sound, more or less a straight
"aw" as in "law" or "saw" (the letter is also a Swedish word, meaning
'small river in a Nordic country').  We have been through this before,
haven't we..?

"A-ring" (where the "A" of course has such an A-ring :-) is the most
specific Swedish term for it I can come up with.  And be sure not to
mix it up with the O-ring, because that's a big sporting event... :-)

Typographically, the ring above 'A' is to be distinguished from for
instance a degree circle, which is much larger.  In some non-detailed
typefaces, such as block letters used in advertising, the ring may be
replaced by a sturdy dot not much thicker than the bars of the 'A'
itself.

If you are really desperate for a word, maybe you should ask the Czech?
The Czech alphabet contains a 'U' with a similar circle above, but I
don't know how it's pronounced or how the Czech consider it different
from a regular 'U'.  Also, I'm not sure whether all the same typographic
rules applies to this ring independently of the alphabet at hand.

Now that you mention it, I realize that we hardly have any words in
Swedish for the other diacritical marks either.  What is 'diaeresis' to
you is simply "(tva) prickar" ('two dots') to us.  Caret?  Circumflex?
Cedilla?  Ogonek?  Two the extent these words are pronounciable, we have
brought them unmodified into Swedish, but few people really care about
them, so this is mostly a topic for linguists and typographers anyway.

> P.S.  when we ask Swedish friends about the name in Norwegian (the real
> goal of the hunt) and about the name in Swedish, they get very angry.
> They assert that it has no name in Swedish; that it is not like a 
> tilde in Spanish that is separate and has a name, but is like the 
> the bottom bar you add to an F to make it an E, there is nothing you
> add to an F to make an E; there are just two characters that look quite
> similar, neither was derived from the other....

I think this is a very silly thing to get angry about, and I think they
are at least partly wrong if they say what you claim...  The 'A with
ring' is clearly derived from the basic Latin 'A', and I think the ring
was originally a diminutive 'o' put on top of the 'A' to indicate its
pronounciation slant, just as the diaeresis ('umlaut') put on top of
'A' and 'O' (and on 'U' in German) was originally a tiny 'e'.

I think what does make some Swedes upset is when they suspect a
tendency to lump the three last letters of the Swedish alphabet
indiscriminantly together with just any accented letter in any
language.  Even though I agree that there are distinctions, I don't
think Swedish has a monopoly on distinct letters.  Note that we
sort them as independent letters, which makes them different from
for instance German 'umlauted' vowels, and from arbitrary vowels
with either acute or grave accents in French, Spanish and several
other languages (the two kinds of foreign diacritics best known in
Sweden, to some extent used in Swedish proper names).

However, I seem to recall that the Spanish alphabet has its reserved
positions for N-tilde (enye), double-L (elye), and a few others.
Every alphabet has its unique history and sorting order.  Two dots
without a letter below is just a generic 'diaeresis' to me.  Put this
diacritic above 'a', 'o', or 'u' in German, and you get an 'umlaut'
(vowel shift).  Put the same diacritic above the second vowel of two
consecutive ones in a French word, and you get a 'trema' (separating
the vowels phonetically, as in 'Citroen' or 'Israel').  I must admit
that it strikes me as odd when people refer to two dots above 'y' as
a case of 'umlaut'; I can in no way imagine how a 'y' is to be
'umlauted' in German, but I understand that this is just a synonym
for 'diaeresis' in common English...

So, I'd like to ask those angry Swedes you met to explain to me how a
Swedish A-ring is different from a Czech U-ring is different from a
Spanish N-tilde from a Danish O-slash from a Dutch IJ from a Russian
YO from an English W from an Icelandic Edh from a Croatian Dje from
a Latin OE from a German SZ from... ;-)  There are simply pet peeves
enough for all of us!!
--
Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University
Paper Mail: Box 520, S-751 20 UPPSALA, Sweden
Phone: +46 18 183170   EMail: andersa@DoCS.UU.SE
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic