Latin Capital Letter Ae

The Latin Capital Letter Ae at U+00C6 is an uppercase Latin letter formed from A and E, used as a distinct letter or ligature depending on the language and context. It is part of the Latin-1 Supplement block and is a printable cased letter rather than punctuation or a symbol. In Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese, Æ is a regular alphabet letter with its own place in sorting and spelling. It appears in ordinary words and names such as Danish Ærø, Norwegian Ægir, and Icelandic Ævar, generally representing a front vowel sound rather than the two-letter sequence “AE.” In older Latin, Old English, and some scholarly editions, Æ may be used as a ligature for the vowel pair ae, as in forms related to Caesar or encyclopaedia. English mostly writes these with plain “ae” or “e” today, but the capital ligature still appears in historical typography, classicist writing, personal names, and branding. It is easy to confuse Æ with the separate letters AE in search, sorting, or data entry, especially in systems that fold accents and ligatures for matching. In names and language text, however, replacing it can change the spelling convention or lose the local alphabetic form.