What does this Y symbol abbreviate in a Quaker birth record? You can view the document here: * < For each birth, it reads something like this example: > Mary Wright (Daughter of James Wright & Mary his wife) was born y? 3rd day of the 6th month 1708 So, when accounting for Quaker dates, Mary Wright was born August 3, 1708 (Gregorian Calendar), but what does the `y?` stand for before the day of the month?

More specifically, there used to be a letter named 'thorn' in Old and Middle English, pronounced with a 'th' sound. Over time thorn was drawn more and more like the letter 'y' (though it retained its 'th' sound), and eventually printers started using 'y' in its place to save on letter plates. Thorn had all but disappeared by the 1700s, but earlier texts including the King James Bible used 'y' with a superscripted 'e' as a short form of 'the', so it's likely the highly religious Quakers copied it.

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