Doug Ewell wrote:

> Pierpaolo BERNARDI <bernardp at CLI dot DI dot UNIPI dot IT> escribió:
>
> > The Diccionario de la Lengua Española de la
> > Real Academia Española says:
> > "Su nombre es uve doble, ve doble o doble ve."
> >
> > The Gran Diccionario de la Lengua Española SGEL
> > only gives "uve doble".
> >
> > The second dict. looks to me less oriented to American
> > Spanish than the first.
>
> La letra W no se utiliza en las palabras verdaderamente españolas y se
> considera "extranjera" al alfabeto español. Por lo tanto, no me
> sorprende que tiene más de un nombre.

Actually, I think that "W" is unambiguously called "double V" in both
Spanish and Italian.

The ambiguity is rather for the letter "V", which has two names in both
languages: "vi" or "vu" in Italian, and "ve" or "uve" in Spanish.

Consequently, "W" can be "doble ve" or "doble uve", and "doppia vi" or
"doppia vu", respectively. (Add the fact that adjectives may either precede
or follow the modified noun, and you have two more variants for each
language: "ve doble" or "uve" doble", and "vi doppia" or "vu doppia" .)

For Italian, my impression is that "vu" was the original name of the letter
<V, u> which existed before <U, u> and <V, v> where invented.

_ Marco