Have you ever looked up at the Twin Falls County Courthouse and wondered why the word 'county' is spelled with a 'V'?  Here's why.

This answer isn't nearly as entertaining as you might hope. The historical Latin alphabet only has 23 letters instead of the 26 we have now. At one the time, the letter V was an allograph.

An allograph is a variation of a letter in another context. Uppercase and lowercase letters are allographs. Before the use of the letter U, the shape V stood for both the vowel U and the consonant V. blog.dictionary.com

The pronunciation of the letter 'V' varied depending on how it was used.

So it might look like the founding fathers of Twin Falls flunked spelling, but in this case, the 'V' is pronounced as a 'U'.

It's interesting to note that the Twin Falls County Courthouse uses the modern spelling on all other signage.

Townsquare Media Twin Falls
Townsquare Media Twin Falls
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