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In a historical English book published in 1875, the grapheme 'm̃' (m with a diacritical tilde) is used in the title.

Ye parish of Cam̃erwell : a brief account of the parish of Camberwell : its history and antiquities / by William Harnett Blanch.
Language(s): English
Published: London : E.W. Allan, 1875.

Cover of the book:
enter image description here

Sources:
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100327885
Google Books

Cam̃erwell appears to be same as Camberwell in the book. Did the grapheme m̃ replace the consonant digraph mb here? Was this grapheme/character used in English? (Early Modern English or even before?)

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    Did you read chapter 8 "LOCAL NAMES AND PLACES" which covers the loss and gain of the 'b'?
    – KillingTime
    Commented Dec 23, 2021 at 18:58
  • Just what do you mean by “mean” when you ask What does ‘m̃’ mean? What sort of meaning are you seeking, and what in the world does this have to do with evilly misnamed “silent” letters? These are no more than mere sigla.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Dec 23, 2021 at 19:32
  • @tchrist What do you mean by 'what do you mean by "mean"'? Know what I mean?
    – Mitch
    Commented Dec 23, 2021 at 19:48
  • 1
    I've updated the question to make it better and clear. I hope it helps with your next questions.
    – ermanen
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 0:46
  • 1
    @0.. Nice expansion. This is now an interesting question.
    – Lawrence
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 1:25

1 Answer 1

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The answer lies in the link to "sigla" in tchrist's link and in Killing Time's comment about reading the relevant chapter.

The "tilda" is a siglum - a mark of some sort that the scribe uses as a form of shorthand. In essence it is no different from the common use of local intitialisms in an article or report, e.g.

The County Committee for Agricultural Development (CCAD) announced that there would be no action on the wheat crop. The CCAD also added that the rye crop is doing well.

As far as I am aware, in a given language there would be some standardised sigla to indicate a missing letter, e.g. in French "bête", the circumflex above the 'e' represented the omitted letter 's' - "beste", and in German the umlaut was an "e" - können" = koennen; über = ueber, but there was no general standardised version of sigla which, by and large, would informed you that a letter had been omitted, but not which one.

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  • The last sentence isn't clear: "but there was no general standardised version of sigla which, by and large, would informed you that a letter had been omitted, but not which one."
    – Pound Hash
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 20:39
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    @PoundHash: the idea is that in some languages a few sigla of various designs were incorporated and we call them diacritics. However, sigla exist merely to indicate a missing letter, and it is not possible to say which letter (or letters) was omitted. Today the apostrophe is the standardised version, e.g. "I can't see the fo'c'sle."
    – Greybeard
    Commented Dec 25, 2021 at 11:42

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