History
The Cyrillic letter I was derived from the Greek letter Eta (Η η). This is why the earliest (up to the 13th century) shape of Cyrillic ⟨И⟩ was ⟨H⟩.
The name of the Cyrillic letter I in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was ижє (iže), meaning "which".
In the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter I had a value of 8.
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet there was little or no distinction between the letter ⟨И⟩ and the letter ⟨І⟩ which was derived from the Greek letter Iota (Ι ι). They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire because they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, and are therefore sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I. Today they co-exist in Church Slavonic (with no pronunciation difference) and in Ukrainian (representing actual pronunciation differences). Other modern orthographies for Slavic languages eliminated one of the two letters during alphabet reforms of the 19th or 20th centuries: Russian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian languages use only ⟨И⟩, whereas Belarusian uses only ⟨І⟩.
Read more about this topic: I (Cyrillic)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)