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 and/or letters:
“Holding myself the humblest of all whose names were before the convention, I feel in especial need of the assistance of all.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“...he sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script and to every people in its own language, declaring that every man should be master in his own house.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Esther 1:22.
King Ahasuerus, after his Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command.