That reminds me. The name of the circumflex accent is obviously derived from Greek, but its form is not. Is it in fact the degenerate descendant of the letter "s", does anybody know?
No. When accent marks (probably in fact tone marks) were first applied (retrospectively) to Classical Greek the circumflex accent was curved---exactly like an upside-down breve, in fact. Hence the name, or so I have always assumed. You can see this form in some older fonts. It has also been made identical to the tilde, but I'm pretty certain the upside-down-breve is the original form.
S�amas � Br�g�in ----------------
