Names of Letters
The Phoenician letter names, in which each letter was associated with a word that begins with that sound, continue to be used to varying degrees in Samaritan, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic. The names were abandoned in Latin, which instead referred to the letters by adding a vowel (usually e) before or after the consonant (the exception is zeta, which was retained from Greek). In Cyrillic originally the letters were given names based on Slavic words; this was later abandoned as well in favor of a system similar to that used in Latin.
Read more about this topic: Alfabet
Famous quotes containing the words names of, names and/or letters:
“All the names of good and evil are parables: they do not declare, but only hint. Whoever among you seeks knowledge of them is a fool!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)