Modern names of the obsolete kana ゑ and ゐ


In modern Japanese, the kana ゑ/ヱ (we) and ゐ/ヰ (wi) are largely obsolete. Words
formerly containing them now are pronounced with /e/ and /i/, so they were
replaced by え and い, respectively.

But when referring to the letters themselves, it would be ambiguous to
pronounce them like that. So what are the names of ゑ and ゐ currently? That is,
how do you refer to those letters in speech?




**_Update:** I originally said these characters were obliterated from the
language. I was wrong about that, as shown in the accompanying picture._

![Restaurant with archaic character](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IJPOq.jpg)

As you can see in the picture above, the character does pop up now and again.
I've probably passed by this place in Shinjuku countless times, but never took
notice of it until recently when this question had the issue of archaic
characters on my mind. So I took a picture with the intent of seeing how
people reacted to it.

First, interestingly, it seems from [looking up the restaurant on the
web](http://www.hotpepper.jp/strJ000853137/) (look at the grey furigana above
the restaurant name on the linked site), they intend for the middle character,
`ヰ`, to be pronounced as `イ`, to form `ワイン`, as in "wine".

So the restaurant is called `新宿ワヰン酒場` and read `しんじゅく ワイン さかば`. "Shinjuku Wine
Bar".

However, this is obviously done for very deliberate effect, and only by the
context of obviously being a wine bar does the reading deviate from its
original pronunciation and take on a modern one.

So it is _not_ read `ウィ`, as I would have assumed. When I first saw it, I
thought it would be read `ワウィン`, which is a torturous word to pronounce. I
think without context like this restaurant, the characters would _usually_ be
read `ウィ` and `ウェ`, respectively, but their official removal from the language
means they are subject to individual play.

I asked some Japanese people around me (some of them strangers in the
Starbucks I happen to be writing this at) how they would tell a friend over
the phone about this restaurant so that the listener would know the middle
character was not `イ` but `ヰ`.

Some people at first said that it was simply not possible to describe it over
the phone, that it had to be shown. One suggested it might be similar enough
to a Korean character to use that as a way to explain it, which is obviously
not really a viable method but gives a sense of how unfamiliar these
characters have become.

However, after a little while and some group consensus, one description
emerged as a clear winner:

> 昔のカタカナの「イ」

Even the people who at first didn't know how they would describe it said that
if someone said that to them, they would know what was being described, even
if they might have to look it up to confirm its exact shape.

Thus, I think if you really wanted to be understood among people who weren't
[オタク](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku) about writing and characters, saying
`「昔の...」` would be the description of choice.




If I talk about the letters ゐ/ヰ and ゑ/ヱ, I would call them ワ行の「ゐ」 (pronounced
as わぎょうのい) and ワ行の「ゑ」 (わぎょうのえ), or explain the letters in some way (昔の仮名の「ゐ」
and so on). I may or may not pronounce them as ウィ and ウェ, but I will probably
try to avoid relying solely on pronunciation. The same also applies to を/ヲ.

As David M. R. writes, 和文通話表 (the Japanese version of the [spelling
alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_alphabet)) regulates the name
of these letters as ゐどのヰ and かぎのあるヱ. However, I would not expect that average
native speakers of Japanese know 和文通話表 or that they understand which
characters ゐどのヰ and かぎのあるヱ refer to.

