Richard Wordingham wrote:
- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Marco Cimarosti <marco.cimarosti@...>
wrote:

> > [Cyrillic] ... <? ?> ... clearly correspond to
> > Greek ... <? ?> (...
> > ) although they show some degree of graphic
> > variation, especially in the lowercase.
>
> This cyrillic letter actually derives from the omicron-ypsilon
> ligature, which looks like an open-topped '8'.

Why should it be?

- The capital form has practically the same shape as Greek Upsilon;

- The small form is merely a smaller version of the capital form, as most
Cyrillic letters are;

- The sound, /u/, is the same as the sound Greek Upsilon presumably had when
Cyrillic was invented;

- The numeric value, 400, is the same as the value of Greek Upsilon;

- The place of U in the Cyrillic alphabet is the same as the place of
Upsilon in the Greek alphabet: between Te (=Tau) and Ef (=Phi).

Finally, old Cyrillic actually had a letter derived from the Omicron+Upsilon
ligature, called Oku (Unicode U+0478), but it looks very different from
Cyrillic U, Greek Upsilon and the Omicron+Upsilon ligature.

--
Marco