Ñ (eñe) is a distinctive letter of the extended Latin alphabet, formed by placing a tilde (or virgulilla) over an n, and it originated in medieval Spanish as a shorthand for the double nn (e.g., anno became año), being formally defined in the 18th century. It primarily represents the palatal nasal sound [ɲ] (like the ny in "canyon") and has been adopted by numerous languages, including Galician, Basque, Filipino, Quechua, and Guarani, among others. Unlike many diacritic letters, ñ is considered a letter in its own right in Spanish and other languages, with its own name and a dedicated place in the alphabet (after n), similar to how w evolved from vv. While it typically denotes a palatal nasal, in some languages like Kazakh and Crimean Tatar it represents the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in "wing"), and in Breton and Rohingya it marks nasalization of a preceding vowel. Other Romance languages use different spellings for the same sound—such as gn in Italian and French, nh in Portuguese, and ny in Catalan—highlighting ñ's distinctive Spanish origin. Today, ñ has become a powerful cultural symbol of Spanish identity, even having its own dedicated Morse code sequence (— — · — —).