N, the Sütterlin letter n
N is the 14th letter of the German alphabet, representing a voiced alveolar nasal /n/, pervasive in German inflectional morphology and verb endings. In Sütterlinschrift, it was redesigned in 1911 by Ludwig Sütterlin with upright, geometric proportions for German schoolchildren.
In words
Sonntag · Sunday
Kinder · children
Weihnachten · Christmas
Easy to confuse with
Looks like e (Sütterlin e)
The n is joined at the bottom and the e at the top: two short strokes linked across their feet are an n, linked across their tops an e.
Looks like u (Sütterlin u)
The u is written exactly like the n and is told apart only by the small arc drawn above it; without the arc it is an n. A straight bar above an n is not that arc: it doubles the letter (nn).
History
The letter N is the 14th letter of the German alphabet. Phonetically, it represents a voiced alveolar nasal /n/, pervasive in German inflectional morphology and verb endings.
Sütterlin lowercase n consists of two upright vertical strokes in the middle zone joined by a curved bottom link. Capital N is composed of two upright vertical lines connected by a clean diagonal slash.
The letter n is ubiquitous in German documents, forming plural inflections, dative cases, infinitives, and past participles. Scribes frequently used a horizontal tilde or macron over a single n (n̄) as a shorthand for 'nn', a crucial abbreviation for genealogists to recognize.
N began as the sign for a snake,[1] and the Phoenician letter that grew from it already had the sound n.[2] The Greeks took nun over as ny and kept the sound,[3] and the Etruscans, and at first the Romans, took N in its early Greek form.[4] In the Sütterlin model a bar written over n stands for nn.[5]
Sources
- [1] N — Wikipedia (German) — snake (accessed 2026-10-14)
- [2] N — Wikipedia (German) — Phoenician n (accessed 2026-10-14)
- [3] N — Wikipedia (German) — Greek ny (accessed 2026-10-14)
- [4] N — Wikipedia (German) — early Greek form (accessed 2026-10-14)
- [5] Sütterlinschrift — Wikipedia (German) — barred n for nn (accessed 2026-10-14)