is letter “y” derived from “ij”?

It is my intuition, that the origin of the letter y comes from ij based on the usage in Dutch where it very closely resembles ij in both sound and shape. I would go so far as to say it looks like a contraction.

I am particularly interested in this right now, as a company has translated a foreign name into English, and included iy in the name – which strikes me as unusual. If I were transliterating their name, Bafiya seems wrong – and I feel it is better as Bafya or Bafia.

It is hard to justify my opinion, so I was curious about the usage of iy. I can not think of any words that contain iy in them. Are there any?

Solution 1:

Mostly no, but also yes.

In most languages, y is from the Greek letter upsilon, as pointed out by “Matt Эллен”.

The ij digraph from Dutch, though, was originally ii with a lengthened second i to distinguish it in handwriting from u.

However, from ij came the Afrikaans y. Quoth Wikipedia:

IJ probably developed out of ii, representing a long [iː] sound (which it still does in some occasions, such as in the word bijzonder and in several Dutch dialects). In the Middle Ages, the i was written without a dot in handwriting, and the combination ıı was often confused with u. Therefore, the second i was elongated. Later, the dots were added, albeit not in Afrikaans, a language that has its roots in Dutch. In this language the y is used instead.

So this is an example of a yes to your question, but it probably only happened because the letter y already existed.

Finally, off the top of my head, words containing iy are usually transliterations from Russian or other Cyrillic languages, e.g., Dmitriy Karpov or Nataliya Gotsiy.

Solution 2:

No. The letter Y comes from the Greek letter upsilon, via the Latin alphabet.

For more information see the wikipedia entry.

Solution 3:

Check Wikipedia. The letter Y hails back to the times of Phoenicians, pre-dating the Greeks.