The second letter of the alphabet represents a crude house, roughly outlined. After food, shelter is an important consideration and this fact was expressed by the early alphabet maker. The Greeks again were ignorant of the picture and careless or indifferent as to the exact name of the character, and thus two triangles instead of the square supporting a triangle were made and the name changed from “beth” to “beta” (baˊta). Combine the Greek names for the first two letters and we have (alpha-beta) “alphabet.” The Romans shortened the name “beta,” calling it B (bay) and introduced the curved loops. The original name is familiar to us through names found in the Scriptures: Bethel (house of God) and Bethlehem (house of bread).
C-G
The “ship of the desert,” the camel, gave its name to the third letter. Our name for this animal is traceable back to the Phoenician “gimel” (gheˊmel) or “gamel” (gahˊmel). The long neck and the peculiar angle of the neck in relation to the head could easily be represented. The Greeks made changes similar to those in other letters—they improved the shape and changed the name to “gamma.” The Romans did not forget the curve and gave it both the hard and soft sounds (kay and gay). Later on, about the third century A. D., to distinguish the “g” sound from the “k” sound they added a little bar below the opening. Thus we get both C and G from the picture of the camel.
Stevenson said that when he was a child the capital G always impressed him as a genii swooping down to drink out of a handsome cup. Kipling’s story of the invention of the alphabet is filled with similar delightful stories of the picture origin of letter forms.
D
The next letter D, came from a representation of a door—“daleth” (dahleth). It probably pictures the door of a tent. A custom that prevails among the Arabs and in a number of countries gave particular importance to the door of a tent—a stranger, or even an enemy, if he entered through the door of a tent must receive food, drink and shelter. “Daleth” became “delta” with the Greeks and D (day) with the Romans, who, of course, rounded the angle.
E
The house picture gave us B, the door, D, and the window, E. “He” (hay) meant to look, to see, or window, and one writer asserts our familiar street cry “hey, there” can be traced to these ancient times. One side bar of the window was lost early.
The Greeks at first used this sound for the long “e” (epsilon) but afterwards employed the character H or “eta” for the long sound. The Romans at first made no change except to call it “eh.”
This is the letter that occurs so frequently in English words, and many no doubt recall the interesting use that Poe makes of this fact in his story “The Gold Bug.”