Ñ, or ñ (Spanish: eñe, [ˈeɲe] ⓘ), is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet, formed by placing a tilde (also referred to as a virgulilla in Spanish, in order to differentiate it from other diacritics, which are also called tildes) on top of an upper- or lower-case ⟨n⟩.

Historically, ⟨ñ⟩ arose as a ligature of ⟨nn⟩; the tilde was shorthand for the second ⟨n⟩, written over the first;[2] compare umlaut, of analogous origin.

Already in medieval Latin palaeography, the sign that in Spanish came to be called virgulilla ("little comma") was used over a vowel to indicate a following nasal consonant (⟨n⟩ or ⟨m⟩) that had been omitted, as in tãtus for tantus or quã for quam.

Other Romance languages have different spellings for this sound: Italian and French use ⟨gn⟩, a consonant cluster that had evolved from Latin, whereas Occitan and Portuguese chose ⟨nh⟩ and Catalan ⟨ny⟩ even though these digraphs had no etymological precedent.

This is also the case of Philippine languages, Aymara, Quechua, Mapudungún, Guarani, Basque, Chamorro, Leonese, Yavapai, and Iñupiaq[citation needed], whose orthographies have some basis in that of Spanish.

The conventional exceptions (with considerable variations) are proper names, which usually retain ⟨ñ⟩ and their original Spanish or Hispanicised spelling (Santo Niño, Parañaque, Mañalac, Malacañan).

In old Filipino orthography, the letter was also used, along with ⟨g⟩, to represent [ŋ] (except at the end of a word, when ⟨ng⟩ would be used) if appropriate instead of a tilde, which originally spanned a sequence of ⟨n⟩ and ⟨g⟩ (as in ⟨n͠g⟩), such as pan͠galan ("name").

The form ⟨ñg⟩ became a more common way to represent ⟨n͠g⟩ until the early 20th century, mainly because it was more readily available in typesets than the tilde spanning both letters.

In the Breton language, it nasalises the preceding vowel, as in Jañ /ʒã/, which corresponds to the French name Jean and has the same pronunciation.

It is used in a number of English terms of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño, piña colada, piñata, and El Niño.

Until the middle of the 20th century, adapting it as nn was more common in English, as in the phrase "Battle of Corunna"[citation needed].

The Society for the Advancement of Spanish Letters in the Anglo Americas (SASLAA) is the preeminent organization focused on promoting the permanent adoption of ⟨ñ⟩ into the English language.

Latin publisher Bill Teck labeled Hispanic culture and its influence on the United States "Generation Ñ" and later started a magazine with that name.

The circumstances surrounding the crash of serial 'Ñ' Potez 540 plane that was shot down over the Sierra de Gúdar range of the Sistema Ibérico near Valdelinares inspired French writer André Malraux to write the novel L'Espoir (1937), translated into English as Man's Hope and made into the movie named Espoir: Sierra de Teruel.

[6] In 1991, a European Community report recommended the repeal of a regulation preventing the sale in Spain of computer products not supporting "all the characteristics of the Spanish writing system," claiming that it was a protectionist measure against the principles of the free market.

On Linux it can be created by pressing Ctrl+Shift+U and then typing '00d1' or '00f1', followed by space or Ctrl to end the character code input.

This feature allows almost any Unicode character to be encoded, and it is considered important to support languages other than English.