Mifs

[Scottyblue7]

My wife and I had a chance to visit some historical cemeteries last weekend. We happen to notice that some of the gravestones had Misf at the beginning of the names. These graves held young women who have past on.

We were curious if the Misf meant Miss?

[Beeesneees]

Although the fourth letter looks like an 'f', it is actually called the 'long s' or 'medial s' (or occasionally the 'descending s'). There is either a much shorter cross bar than is usual on an 'f', or no cross bar at all -- like this:
ſ
It goes back to times past, when there was no printing and scribes were employed to write by hand. The scribes were critical about the visual impact of the letters, and so in cases where a double 's' was needed, it was deemed unsightly to have two normal ones, as this took up a disproportionate amount of space. So scribes used an elongated s that had little 'curve' in it, often making it both a descender and ascender. This gave it a very close look to an f. This form of the 's' was also before t and other consonants. It was not used at the end of a word.
It made 'miss' look like 'miſs' and 'sinfulness' look like 'ſinfulneſs'
This way of writing died out some time during the 19th Century.
_________________
Cheers m' dears!

[Scottyblue7]

Thank You