Why 'W' is double U

V and U were previously both just V, just like how Y is double duty as both a consonant and a vowel

Formerly U and V were just two different ways of writing same letter, called U (similarly, I and J were both I). W got its name before V became distinguished from U. In English, evidence of the pronunciation "double u" for W is first attested in 1599; evidence of the pronunciation "vee" for V is first attested in 1883 (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). In both cases, though, the pronunciations are probably substantially older, since people rarely write letters' names out.

In some languages it is. The Spanish name of that letter is doble v.

In handwriting a lower case w is usually curved like two u’s

Because Germans. When germanic tribes started adopting the Latin alphabet, they wanted a single symbol for the "wuh" sound. In Latin, the way you would make this sound is with the U (usually written as V) followed by another vowel. For example, the Latin word for a young person or juvenile was IVVENIS with that first I making a "yuh" sound and the second V making a "wuh" sound. What happened in Latin is that, in order to differentiate the two different sounds was to make the pure vowel sound "oo" into the round U, and to make the consonant sound "yuh" look like a J, so IVVENIS became JUVENIS. Eventually, the sound V stood for would shift into a voiced labial fricative, like what V sounds like today. Anyway, the germanic tribes adopted the Latin alphabet and chose to write their "wuh" sounds with two U's, making a double U. The irony is that, eventually, the German speakers themselves would also have their sound for W shift to the voiced labial fricative, but that's unrelated to your question. For anyone following along, yes, I lifted this explanation from NativLang. Sue me.

They could've pronounced it as "way", as we do in the Netherlands

"W" is in fact "double V" in Spanish, especially in Spain.

Back in the days, U and V were basically the same thing and were written like a V, like how I and J were the same thing before they were labelled different.

In Latin, U and V were the same letter (this is where the RETVRN TO EVROPA stuff comes from)

U and V used to be the same letter in the Latin alphabet If you look at old roman text, you'll see things like "NEPTVNVS" (NEPTUNUS) Before these turned into their own letters, VV was used to represent a different sound (a double U), which then became it's own letter, W, and then V became it's own letter distinct from U

Great video from RobWords about this. Skip to 10:35 for w. https://youtu.be/CYqqFqoLnnk

Very long story short, in old English U used to be written as V (you'll see it on statues across the UK) so when W was created, it really was double u. But u was a v (not pronounced v)

Typography. It literally was written uu for some time and even some old printing presses. The name stuck, even if the symbol didn't. Same with Ampersand, but in reverse (everyone knows the & is the ampersand, not nearly as many people remember it's named that because it used to be "and, which is to say and" and used to be on the list of normal letters)

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Roman letters didnt have a letter for the "wuh" sound, so they literally typed uu to symbolize it. Eventually it combined more together and sharpened into more of a vv symbol till it attatched to w