r rotunda

English

The Unicode letter pair latin capital/small letter r rotunda rendered by different fonts.

Etymology

From or representing Latin r rotunda (literally “round ‘r’”). The adjective rotunda is the feminine form of rotundus, inflected to agree with littera (“letter”), elliptically omitted (compare e caudata). The phrase is little attested in Latin, and might have been formed in English, or been borrowed from another language which formed it from those Latin roots.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɑː.ɹəʊˈtʌn.də/
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˌɑɹ.ɹoʊˈtʌn.də/

Noun

r rotunda (plural rs rotunda or rs rotundae)

(typography) A curved form of the letter r, found in some medieval and fraktur scripts: ⟨ ꝛ ⟩.
Coordinate term: straight r
- 1989, Arend Quak, Florus (Floor) Rhee, Palaeogermanica et onomastica., Rodopi (→ISBN), page 3:
  […] completely informed about the decisions made and the reasons to make them, e.g. r rotunda does not figure in the transcription as the use of straight r and r rotunda is governed by the preceding character and thus completely predictable.
- 2000, Anna A. Grotans, Heinrich Beck, Anton Schwob, De consolatione philogiae: studies in honor of Evelyn S. Firchow, volume 2, page 624:
  And certain geminated consonants are represented by capitals : ɢ, ɴ, ʀ, ꜱ. Does a form like haʀ mean a long r, or is it a scribal habit on the level of the usage of r rotunda, not straight r, after round letters? The occurrence of forms with -rr […]
- 2017, Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen, editor, A Grammar of Möðruvallabók, BRILL, →ISBN, page 11:
  The distinction between r rotunda and straight r has not been kept in the transcription, as the usage of r rotunda is predictable from the preceding character: r rotunda is used after round letters.

Translations

curved form of the letter r

Czech: okrouhlé r
German: rundes r n