Word-initial ff

Word-initial ff is the digraph ⟨ff⟩ occurring at the beginning of a word. It is sometimes occurs capitalized as ⟨Ff⟩, and sometimes occurs as the lowercase ⟨ff⟩.

In some languages, such as Welsh, ⟨ff⟩ is a perfectly normal digraph to begin a word, and this phenomenon is not notable.

In English, however, it is quite unusual for this digraph to occur in this position (excluding such things as acronyms and words or names borrowed from a language like Welsh). Its most striking occurrence is as an feature of a few proper names descended from Middle English, such as Ffoulkes. There it may even occur completely uncapitalized, as in the surname of British historian Charles ffoulkes, in violation of the typical English language convention of capitalizing proper names. In this setting, ⟨Ff⟩ and ⟨ff⟩ have no phonetic difference from ⟨F⟩, and the spelling has been explained as a misunderstanding of palaeography: the symbol later interpreted as two lowercase ⟨f⟩s simply represented, in certain traditional handwriting styles, the upper case ⟨F⟩.

In historical Spanish orthography, word-initial ⟨ff⟩ had a phonetic meaning for several centuries.

In English, proper names are conventionally capitalized, which makes the appearance of a lowercase letter at the beginning of one unusual. Furthermore, ⟨ff⟩ (no matter the capitalization) is an extremely rare digraph to find at the beginning of English words otherwise, only occurring in loanwords, neologisms, acronyms, and the like.^{[1][2][improper synthesis?]}

Mark Antony Lower in his Patronymica Brittanica (1860) called this spelling "needless", "ridiculous", and "originat[ing] in a foolish mistake":^[1]

☛ FF. The double-f is used in some surnames, quite needlessly, in affectation of antiquity: e. g., Ffrench, Ffarington, Ffoulkes, Ffooks, Ffolliott. Now as double-f never did and never will begin an English word, this is ridiculous, and originates in a foolish mistake respecting the ff of old manuscripts, which is no duplication, but simply a capital f.

Later in the 19th century the palaeographer Edward Maunde Thompson wrote from the British Museum:^[3]

The English legal handwriting of the Middle Ages has no capital F. A double f (ff) was used to represent the capital letter. In transcribing, I should write F, not ff; e. g. Fiske, not ffiske.

The replacement of manuscript word-initial ⟨ff⟩ by ⟨F⟩ is now a scholarly convention.^[4]

Usage in names such as Charles ffoulkes and Richard ffrench-Constant persists. The initial ⟨Ff⟩ in Welsh spelling of imported proper names has been attributed to the standing of ⟨ff⟩ as part of normal Welsh orthography.^[5] Citing Trevor Davenport-Ffoulkes, H. L. Mencken wrote in a supplement to The American Language that "The initial Ff is sometimes written ff, but this is an error."^[6] David Crystal cites both Welsh-derived proper names, such as Ffion (where single ⟨F⟩ would sound like English v in Welsh phonetics, IPA [v]), and English-derived names such as Ffoulkes.^[7]

It has been argued that word-initial ⟨ff⟩ was used in written Spanish around 1500, to indicate the phonetic difference between an f-sound and an aspirated h.^[8] It was used in medieval Spanish and, less frequently, in Early Modern Spanish.^[9]: 296 It can be observed to have come in strongly for Spanish spelling during the 13th century.^[10] Unlike the English digraph, the first f of the digraph was capitalized when it occurred in proper nouns.^{[10][improper synthesis?]} The actual pronunciation was dynamic, with the aspiration being dropped from the time when Madrid became the Spanish capital (1561). The word-initial ⟨ff⟩ spelling convention lagged behind current phonetics, providing a way of tracking pronunciations after they had become obsolete.^[9]

U+FB00 ff LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FF is a stylistic ligature from Unicode, and is widely available in most modern fonts.