Why M Isn't Called Double-N

Björn Höhrmann recently asked why "m" is not known as double-n à la double-u for "w". And therein lies a story...

The story of why "m" isn't called double-n dates back proclamation made in the reign of the emperor Nero. The emperor's daughter had fallen in love with a slave. Nero was obviously not particularly happy about this arrangement, but because he loved his daughter so, instead of putting the slave instantly to death as would be usual Roman custom, he consulted a soothsayer about the matter. The soothsayer gave him the following cryptic message (I paraphrase): "if the moon turns green, her love will be a sheen; if the moon turns blind, her love will be a grind". Now, Nero interpreted this as meaning something to do with the moon, so he assembled a gaggle of astronomers to check the state of the moon every night hoping that it would do something along the lines of what the soothsayer said.

Meanwhile, the daughter was busy seeing the slave still in secret, and they used to meet at a brothel called La Luna. The brothel, though it sounds kinda seedy, was actually one of those Roman orgy-like places, and its clientele used to be the more astute individuals of the roman republic—some of the senators, the judges, and so on.

Now, the metaphor nowadays for the upper classes is "blue blood", but back in Roman times it used to be called "green blood". So after a couple of weeks had gone by, the moon was full and Nero was most expecting it to tell him something, but nothing did. Yet! On that very night there was a strange revolt in the brothel. The prostitutes, rebelling, went on a rampage killing all of their "visitors". In the carnage, not only were a sizable proportion of the senators and other elite of ancient rome wiped out, but mistakenly the slave that Nero's daughter was in love with was also horribly injured. Horrors!

When Nero heard about this, he understood suddenly what the soothsayer had meant! If the Moon brothel turned green... it'd been splattered wall to wall with the green blood of its clientele. Nero decided to bless the union between his daughter and the slave, but the slave, injured, was actually so bad off that he was dying. Sad that he had not interpreted the sign more cleverly and prevented this catastophe, Nero granted the slave one wish that should be kept forever in perpetuity whilst the Roman Empire stood. The slave replied that he wanted the letter "m" to no longer be called double-n, as it had been until that time, because Nero's daughter was called Neroette, and to him the letter "N" was the most beautiful in the whole language and could never be doubled. Nero granted this, and proclaimed it to be so forever.

By the time the Roman Empire fell, several hundred years later, it was thought that this custom had something to do with an incident involving clowns, a bordello (they were close in that respect), and a very old statue of a donkey. But since by then the donkey was quite venerated in the small rebel states that came to replace the Roman Empire, they kept the tradition, and so it passed into antiquity and has still remained so until the present day.