the Y in "Ye Olde" is actually thorn. If you look at thorn, you can see how it happened - the loop was unlooped. Also - English was never consistent. The thorn

the Y in "Ye Olde" is actually thorn. If you look at thorn, you can see how it happened - the loop was unlooped. Also - English was never consistent. The thorn/eth split was completely random and was down more to style than correctness. Modern spelling of Old English has standardised the spelling. But macrons and dots over g's and c's also never existed, but are common in modern spelling for OE.