# Questions about the ligatures Æ and Œ **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 20, 2000, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023 "2000-05-20T01:57:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/1 "2000-05-20T01:57:52Z")
1. The name of the ligature Æ is ash. It is also a pseudonym of Irish poet George Russell. How do you pronounce the pseudonym? Is is “ash”, “Ay-ee”, or “Aah”? 2. Does the ligature Œ have a name of its own in English, other than “the oe ligature”? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/2 "2000-05-20T04:02:58Z")
This linkhttp://www.brl.org/formats/rule18.html calls the oe ligature ‘ethel’ ---
**Author:** ![avalongod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@avalongod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/avalongod)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/3 "2000-05-20T04:34:48Z")
I think the AE ligature is pronounced either like an ay-ee as you suggested, or just like a hard E, but I could be SO wrong on this. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/4 "2000-05-20T05:09:10Z")
The ae ligature is pronounced as if it were an e in the appropriate context. As in, anaesthetic, aerial, and encyclopaedia. ---
**Author:** ![ChiefScott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58f4c7/32.png) [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/5 "2000-05-20T05:21:01Z")
OE Merman OE Alcohol OE Mertz ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/6 "2000-05-20T05:24:45Z")
The **OP** asks how to pronounce the _pseudonym_ Since his AE signature was supposedly originally AEON, that would leave out ash. I vote for Ay-ee. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2000, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/7 "2000-05-20T05:26:41Z")
Aeon (or Æon), which is the British (but not Canadian) spelling of “eon”, is pronounced “eon”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2000, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-the-ligatures-ae-and-oe/20023/8 "2000-05-21T16:40:02Z")
OK, here’s what OED has to say about it: ae (usually written as a digraph or ligature, but also, and in the earliest times, separately ae) was in OE. the symbol of a simple vowel, intermediate between a and e. When short, as in glaed, faeder, it represented orig. Teut. short a, and had the power of modern End. a. in man, glad; when long, as in sae, flaesc, the same sound prolonged, as in a common American pronunciation of bear, hair, there. After 1100 the short ae was generally replaced by a (though sometimes by e); the long ae continued to be written ae in the 12th and early 13th c. … The symbol ae, which thus disappeared from the language in 13th c., was re-introduced in 16th c. in forms derived from Lating words with ae, and (this being the Latin symbolization of Greek ai) Greek words in ai; as aedify, aether. But this ae had only an etymological value, and whenever a word became thorough English, the ae was changed into simple e. As for oe, the OED says that originally it was written separately, and in Early Old English it was the symbol of the i-umlaut o, which originally sounded like the German umlauted-o, which is basically similar to the the “oo” in “foot”, with lips rounded. It goes on to say that later this was simply pronounced as an “e.” “in moden Eng. oe reproduces the usual L. spelling of Gr. oi, which often in med. L., and in Romanic, was treated like simple e.”