Ifín ᚘ (also spelled ''iphin'') is one of the '' forfeda'', the "additional" letters of the

Ogham Ogham (also ogam and ogom, , Modern Irish: ; , later ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish language ( scholastic ...

alphabet. Its sound value according to the ''

Auraicept na n-Éces ''Auraicept na nÉces'' (; "The Scholars' Primer" ) is an Old Irish text on language and grammar. The core of the text may date to the early eighth century, but much material was added between that date and the production of the earliest surviv ...

'', '' De dúilib feda'' and ''

In Lebor Ogaim ''In Lebor Ogaim'' ("The Book of Ogams"), also known as the Ogam Tract, is an Old Irish treatise on the ogham alphabet. It is preserved in R.I.A. MS 23 P 12 308–314 (AD 1390), T.C.D. H.3.18, 26.1–35.28 (AD 1511) and National Library of ...

'', are ''io'', ''ía'', and ''ia'', respectively. The Auraincept glosses the name according to the "arboreal" tradition as ''spinan no ispin'' "

gooseberry Gooseberry ( or (American and northern British) or (southern British)) is a common name for many species of ''Ribes'' (which also includes Ribes, currants), as well as a large number of plants of similar appearance, and also several unrela ...

or thorn". The letter's invention dates to the

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...

period, several centuries after the peak of Ogham usage. Since the Ogham alphabet dates to the

Primitive Irish Primitive Irish or Archaic Irish (), also called Proto-Goidelic, is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages, and the ancestor of all languages within this family. This phase of the language is known only from fragments, mostly persona ...

period, it had no sign for in its original form. ''Ifín'' may originally have been added as a letter expressing called ''Pín'' (probably influenced by Latin ''

pinus A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as c ...

''). Due to the "schematicism of later Ogamists" (McManus 1988:167), who insisted on treating the five primary forfeda as vowels, had again to be expressed as a modification of called Peithe, after '' Beithe'', also called ''beithe bog'' "soft ''beithe''" or, tautologically, ''peithbog'', and the earlier letter designed to express ''p'' was renamed to ''i-phín'', and considered as expressing an ''i-'' diphthong.

Unicode

Both Ifín and Peith have

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

allocations: *Ifín ᚘ U+1698 *Peith ᚚ U+169A

References

*Damian McManus, ''Irish letter-names and their kennings'', Ériu 39 (1988), 127-168. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ifin Ogham letters