I've never encountered a legitimate use of a Y umlaut. Perhaps your ancestor was a heavy metal rock star ahead of his time.
From the Wikipedia article on "heavy metal umlaut": The heavy metal umlaut, or "rock dots", is an umlaut over letters in the name of a heavy metal band, such as Mötley Crüe or Motörhead. The use of umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface is a form of foreign branding intended to give a band's logo a Teutonic quality.
And from the Wikipedia article on "Queensrÿche": ...changed their name to Queensrÿche (reportedly inspired by the first song on their demo). They were the first band to apply the heavy metal umlaut to the letter Y. As Tate later joked: "The umlaut over the 'y' has haunted us for years. We spent eleven years trying to explain how to pronounce it."
It is also possible that if the persons came from Holland ( they could have
ended up in Germany quite a few did and vise a versea) in Holland a lot of
words and names are spelled with ij which written looks like a y with a
umlaut. Anna Marie
It may have to do with pronunciation. The y in German is so seldom used and
the letter is called an ipsilon. Perhaps it was meant to indicate an (e)i
sound for pronouncing like I in English. All the Wedemeiers I know, spell
it with an i. Hope that makes sense. Heide
Here is another explanation and it could only be answered correctly if
someone looked at the original. In the old German script (I'm looking at a
copy) the y and z are very similar as is the j. They all have the same
tail. Maybe to differentiate between the three they gave the j a dot, y two
dots and the z they left alone. I know the letter u gets a funny half moon
over it to distinguish between the n and u because they are written the
same. Heide
I was just looking at Edna M. Bentz' book on old German Script and found that three of the ten examples of capital Y had umlauts. Also six of 13 examples of the lower case y had umlauts.
The spelling of the name Wedeme�r would seem to make sense to me (maybe no one else). Without the umlaut it would become Wedemeyer. In this contex, (to me)it does change the sound of the word.
Sometimes the letter "e" comes and goes without the umlaut changing.
In my case the umlaut went, without the spelling changing. In my case, I guess that American printers didn't bother to include the umlaut in their typesets.
I had a feeling I had seen it before. My examples were from after 1900.
They had to do something to keep those letters apart because they look so
much alike. Heide
Gale made sense to me too! Wedemeÿr might be the equivalent of Wedemeyer when the umlaut changes the sound of the word. Heide might be right too, suggesting that the e after the Y umlaut in Wedemeÿer could be inserted in old German script due to the contingencies of the script. In this combined scenario the Y apparent umlaut could still be an umlaut in the strict sense and not just a scriptal flourish.
The Dutch speakers might perhaps confirm that WEDEMEIJR would be equivalent to the above?
My relatives were not consistent in their early spelling. See the following records:
My g-g-g grandfather Johann Heinrich Wedemeier, born 31 March 1752. (1766 church confirmation register in Moringen)
My g-g grandfather Johann Heinrich Ludwig Wedemeÿer, married 30 Sep 1805, (church register Markt Parish of Goslar)
Just an observation... I cannot work out the confusing way that old German script represents the name Heinrich! Perhaps there might be a book on "Old German Script for Dummies"?
