Etymology

who

W4H4O1

Today it means: What person or people; which person or people; asks for the identity of someone; used in a direct or indirect question. Full definition →

Middle English who ← Old English hwā ← Proto-West Germanic *hwaʀ
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*kʷos
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*hwaz
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*hwaʀ
  4. Old English · inherited fromhwā
  5. Middle English · inherited fromwho
  6. English todaywho

From Middle English who, hwo, huo, wha, hwoa, hwa, from Old English hwā (dative hwām, genitive hwæs), from Proto-West Germanic *hwaʀ, from Proto-Germanic *hwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷos, *kʷís. The sound change /hw/ > /h/ (without a corresponding change in spelling) was due to wh-cluster reduction after an irregular change of /ɑː/ to /oː/ in Middle English (instead of the expected /ɔː/) and further to /uː/ regularly in Early Modern English. A similar change occurred in two. Compare how, which underwent wh-reduction earlier (in Old English), and thus is spelt with h. Compare Scots wha, West Frisian wa, Dutch wie, Low German we, German wer, Swedish vem, Danish hvem, Norwegian Bokmål hvem, Norwegian Nynorsk kven, Icelandic hver.

Words from the same roots

Proto-Indo-European*kʷos all →

whither

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.