Borrowed fromSpanishcedilla(literally“littlezed”), c. 1600. In Spanishcedilla referred to the letter ⟨Ç⟩, which had evolved from ⟨Ꝣ⟩, a Visigothic form of the letter Z (called a Z withcopete); hence the name. The lower part of ⟨Ç⟩ (which came to be reinterpreted as a diacritical mark under a C) is the remnant of the original Z, after it gradually reduced in size; whereas the upper part was originally just an ornamentation over the Z (which increased in size until it resembled letter C, and finally came to be identified with this letter).
(orthography) In the spelling of Catalan, French, Portuguese and some other languages, a mark⟨¸⟩ sometimes placed under the letterc to indicate that it is pronounced/s/ rather than/k/, as in Catalanforça, Frenchmenaçant, and Portuguesealmoço, and also used in various other languages to change the sounds of other letters.
2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, inThe Guardian[1], archived fromthe original on4 April 2025:
California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly nocedilla (¸).
