Lydian Letter O

It is the Lydian letter for the vowel “o”. Linguists treat it as a rounded vowel—Greek spellings of Lydian names back that reading; the exact phonetics stay debated.

Lydian writing reaches the eighth century BCE in one corpus account; others date coin legends, graffiti, and object inscriptions to the late seventh or early sixth century BCE. Longer texts are mainly from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.

The alphabet existed to write Lydian—mostly funerary stones, plus decrees, ownership marks on seals, dedications, and religious texts. Everywhere it is a working letter inside words, never a stand-alone emblem.

Did its meaning ever change?

Its sound stayed steadier than its setting. Names and formulaic curses dominate the tomb corpus, yet the letter kept the same vowel job in every genre the script covered.

The alphabet descends from an archaic Greek variant; the Lydian language it wrote belongs to Anatolian Indo-European, with Lycian and Carian as sibling scripts. By about the 1st century BCE Lydian had yielded to Greek, leaving 𐤬 a historical-script character.

Why does 𐤬 display differently?

Your font picks the shape; the character stays the same. Inscriptions run right-to-left, sometimes left-to-right, once boustrophedon—direction alternating per line. Words divide by spaces, continuous writing, or dots.

Reproducing an inscription? Keep its direction and use a font with Lydian coverage. The everyday o you type is a different character, not a substitute.