E with Umlaut (ë): a Diaeresis in Noël, a Letter in Albanian

Why is ë called an e with umlaut if German never writes it?

Because it looks like ä, ö and ü. The name describes the shape, not the job. German is missing from the alphabets that use the e with umlaut in Unicode CLDR, listed in the languages card below. Those that do use it give the dots other jobs. UnicodeData.txt (opens in a new tab) names it LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH DIAERESIS: e plus the combining mark U+0308.

Each row of the table is a different job for the umlaut e. The rows come from Wiktionary's entry for ë (opens in a new tab) and the Flemish Team Taaladvies (opens in a new tab). They also draw on the Académie française (opens in a new tab), the Luxembourgish spelling rules (opens in a new tab) and the BGN/PCGN table for Russian (opens in a new tab).

Job of the dots	Where	Example	What the reader does
Split two vowels	English, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Welsh	Zoë, België, Noël	starts a new syllable at the ë
Sit on a silent e	traditional French spelling	aiguë, ciguë	says the u before it and skips the e
Spell a sound of its own	Albanian, Luxembourgish, Filipino	Durrës, Mënsch, Mëranaw	says a schwa, /ə/
Stand for Russian ё	BGN/PCGN romanization	Orël, Yëlkino	reads it as Russian ё

Only the last job has any link to the umlaut. Wiktionary's entry for ё (opens in a new tab) says the Russian dots were probably inspired by the German umlaut. The writer Nikolay Karamzin first brought the letter into print in 1797. So the one ë that owes its dots to German is a stand-in for a Cyrillic letter.

Why do Zoë, Chloë, Noël and Brontë have dots in English?

In English the e umlaut is an optional reading hint: say this e, and start a new syllable with it. Wiktionary lists Zoe and Chloe as the plain spellings of the same names. The table uses Wiktionary's entries for Zoë (opens in a new tab), Chloë (opens in a new tab), Noël (opens in a new tab) and Brontë (opens in a new tab).

Name	Wiktionary IPA	Spelling without dots	Where the name comes from
Zoë	/ˈzoʊ.i/	Zoe, Zoey	Greek ζωή, life
Chloë	/ˈkloʊ.i/	Chloe	also a French form of Chloé
Noël	French noël, /nɔɛl/	Noel	French for Christmas, from Latin natalis
Brontë	/ˈbɹɒn.ti/	Bronte	Patrick Brontë's rendering of Brunty or Prunty

Brontë is the clearest case. Wiktionary says Patrick Brontë put the diaeresis on the final e. It shows that the name has two syllables. The Guardian (opens in a new tab) reported in September 2024 that Westminster Abbey had added the dots to the sisters' memorial. It had stood without them since 1939. In the paper's words, the name rhymes with Monty, not font.

Spell a name the way its bearer does: Zoe and Zoë are both correct. The names card lists more, such as Raphaël, Joël and Gaëlle. English puts the same hint on other vowels, as in naïve.

Where does Dutch put the trema in België and ideeën?

Dutch calls the e with two dots a trema, and uses it to keep vowel letters apart. Team Taaladvies (opens in a new tab), the Flemish government's language advice service, says the trema stops a vowel from merging with the one before it. A new syllable begins, and the trema goes on its first letter. Where two words meet in a compound, Dutch writes a hyphen instead, as in zee-egel.

Word	Built from	Mark	Wiktionary IPA
België, Belgium	Belg + ië	trema	/ˈbɛl.ɣi.jə/
ideeën, ideas	idee + en	trema	/iˈdeːə(n)/
knieën, knees	knie + en	trema	/ˈkni.ə(n)/
reëel, real	one word	trema	/reːˈeːl/
coëfficiënt	one word	trema twice	/ˌkoː.ɛ.fiˈʃɛnt/
zee-eend, scoter	zee + eend	hyphen	/ˈzeːˌeːnt/

The IPA comes from Wiktionary's entries for België (opens in a new tab), ideeën (opens in a new tab), knieën (opens in a new tab), reëel (opens in a new tab), coëfficiënt (opens in a new tab) and zee-eend (opens in a new tab).

The trema also applies to inflected forms, so the plural ideeën keeps its dots. The duck is different: zee and eend are two words, and Wiktionary marks the old spelling zeeëend as superseded. So the structure of the word, not its sound, decides between ë and a hyphen. Afrikaans writes België too.

Why did French move the dots from aiguë to aigüe?

Because in aiguë the dotted e is silent. The facts give aiguë as /eɡy/: the u is said, the e is not. The Académie française's 1990 rectifications (opens in a new tab) call this an anomaly. A tréma should stop two letters being read as one sound, as in naïf, not sit on a mute vowel. So the reform moves it to the letter that is pronounced.

Traditional spelling	1990 spelling	Which vowel is said
aiguë	aigüe	the u
ambiguë	ambigüe	the u
exiguë	exigüe	the u
contiguë	contigüe	the u
ciguë, hemlock	cigüe	the u
canoë	canoé	the e, now marked as é
Noël	Noël	the e: /nɔɛl/
Israël	Israël	the e: /isʁaɛl/

The canoë row comes from Wiktionary's entry for canoë (opens in a new tab), which lists canoé as the post-1990 form. Wiktionary's ciguë (opens in a new tab) lists cigüe the same way. The Noël and Israël sounds are WikiPron transcriptions in the facts.

Both spellings stay correct: the old forms remain tolerated, and the new ones are taught. Noël keeps its dotted e, because that ë is pronounced. It is also the most frequent French word with ë in AccentPad's subtitle data.

How do Albanians say the ë in Durrës and Vlorë?

As a schwa, or not at all. Wiktionary gives the Albanian letter as /ə/ or silent. In Albanian, ë is a letter of the alphabet, not an accented e. The CLDR Albanian collation (opens in a new tab) gives it its own place, right after e.

Word	Meaning	Wiktionary IPA	What the ë does
ëndërr	dream	[ˈəndər]	a schwa at the start of the word
është	is	/ˈəʃtə/	a schwa, twice
emër	name	/ˈeməɾ/	a schwa in the second syllable
erë	wind	/eɾ(ə)/	at the end, often dropped
Durrës, Durrësi	the city, plain and with the definite ending		stays in both forms
Vlorë, Vlora	the city, plain and with the definite ending		gives way to a in the definite form

The words come from Wiktionary's ëndërr (opens in a new tab), është (opens in a new tab), emër (opens in a new tab), erë (opens in a new tab), Durrësi (opens in a new tab) and Vlorë (opens in a new tab). Vlora is the definite form listed in the Vlorë entry.

We sorted these words with Intl.Collator in Node.js v26 (ICU 78.3, CLDR 48) on 2026-10-09. Albanian rules kept every e word ahead of every ë word: emër, erë, ëndërr, është. English rules ignored the dots and put ëndërr between emër and erë. Search is looser: under Albanian rules, Durres still matched Durrës.

When does Luxembourgish write ë instead of e?

Only for a short stressed schwa. D'Lëtzebuerger Orthografie (opens in a new tab), the official rules from the Zenter fir d'Lëtzebuerger Sprooch, says ë is always short and stressed and sounds like a short ö. The rules call it "e mat Treema", an e with a trema. Wiktionary still describes the letter as an umlauted e. The language's own name has one: Wiktionary transcribes Lëtzebuergesch (opens in a new tab) as [ˈlə.t͡səˌbuə̯.jəʃ].

Rule in the Orthografie	Examples it gives
A stressed short [ə] is written ë	Mënsch, ëffentlech, ënnen, Wëllef
An unstressed e takes no trema	Apel, droen, elo, kachen
Short function words keep a plain e	dem, den, net, ze, but dës
No ë before ch, chs, ck, ng, nk or x	du bréchs, sécher, Stréch
A plural that lost its n is marked with ë	Kopie, Kopië; Batterie, Batterië

Wiktionary's Mënsch (opens in a new tab), human, shows the sound: /menʃ/, said [mənʃ]. The ch rule exists because many speakers say é like ë and hardly tell mécht from Mëscht. The Orthografie's advice: ë never comes before ch, and é never before sch.

Why do Russian place names like Orël have an ë?

Because the names are romanized from Russian ё. The BGN/PCGN system (opens in a new tab) of the British and American names boards writes ё as ë. At the start of a word, after a vowel and after й, ъ or ь, it writes yë. Russian print often leaves the dots off ё, yet the romanization keeps the e with umlaut.

Russian	BGN/PCGN	Where it comes from
ё after a consonant	ë	BGN/PCGN, note 2
ё at the start or after a vowel	yë	BGN/PCGN, note 2
Ёлкино	Yëlkino	the table's own example
Орёл	Orël	Wiktionary, which gives Oryol as the usual English name

The Orël row uses Wiktionary's entries for Орёл (opens in a new tab) and Oryol (opens in a new tab).

Search ignores these dots in both scripts. In the same Node.js check, Russian rules matched Орел to Орёл, and English rules matched Orel to Orël.