Cyrillic Small Letter Ve

A v sound, or the word “in” standing alone. In Russian, в is a plain v, as in “very.” In Ukrainian it is v before vowels, but after a vowel at the end of a word or before a consonant it often turns into a quick w-like glide, like a very short “oo.”

Between spaces, в is a preposition. The sentence decides whether it means “in,” “into” or “at”: Ukrainian “в Києві” means “in Kyiv.”

Is в the Latin letter B?

No. They are different letters from different scripts. In many fonts capital В and Latin B look identical, while lowercase в and b are easy to tell apart. В stands for a v sound, not b. In usernames, domains and other identifiers, check the actual character when it matters.

Where does в come from?

It grew out of Greek beta, β, through early Cyrillic. Early Cyrillic took shape at Preslav, in medieval Bulgaria, for books in Old Church Slavonic, the first written Slavic church language. It drew mainly on Greek letters plus some forms from Glagolitic, an older script made for Slavic religious translations. In the old alphabet this letter was named vedi.

A Cyrillic inscription at Krepcha is dated 921. That dates the script, not today’s lowercase в: early manuscripts had no capital-and-lowercase distinction.