Acrophony (; Greek: ἄκρος ''akros'' uppermost + φωνή ''phone'' sound) is the naming of

letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

s of an

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

ic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spelled with the respective letters: (''alpha''), (''beta''), (''gamma''), (''delta''). The paradigm for acrophonic alphabets is the

Proto-Sinaitic script Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...

and the succeeding

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician a ...

, in which the letter A, representing the sound , is thought to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph representing an ox, and is called "ox", ''ʾalp'', which starts with the glottal stop sound the letter represents. The

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

is descended from the Phoenician, and the stylized head of an ox can still be seen if the letter A is turned upside-down: ∀. The second letter of the Phoenician alphabet is ''bet'' (which means "house" and looks a bit like a shelter) representing the sound and from ''ālep-bēt'' came the word "alphabet"another case where the beginning of a thing gives the name to the whole, which was in fact common practice in the ancient Near East. The

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...

and

early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...

s, although not consisting of ideograms, also have letters named acrophonically. The letters representing /a, b, v, g, d, e/ are named ''Az'', ''Buky'', ''Vedi'', ''Glagol'', ''Dobro'', ''Est''. Naming the letters in order, one recites a poem, a

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...

which helps students and scholars learn the alphabet: ''Az buky vedi, glagol’ dobro est’'' means "I know letters, heword is good" in Old Church Slavonic. In

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

and

Ogham Ogham ( Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langu ...

, letters were formerly named after

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

s, for example A was ''ailm'' (

white fir ''Abies concolor'', the white fir, is a coniferous tree in the pine family Pinaceae. This tree is native to the mountains of western North America, including the Cascade Range and southern Rocky Mountains, and into the isolated mountain ranges ...

), B was ''beith'' (

birch A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech- oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains ...

) and C was ''coll'' ( hazel). The

rune Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

alphabets used by the Germanic peoples were also named acrophonically; for example, the first three letters, which represented the sounds /f, u, þ/, were named ''fé, ur, þurs'' in Norse (wealth, slag/rain, giant) and ''feoh, ur, þorn'' in Old English (wealth, ox, thorn). Both sets of names probably stemmed from Proto-Germanic ''*

fehu The Fe rune (Old Norse '' fé''; Old English '' feoh'') represents the ''f'' and ''v''-sound in the Younger Futhark and Futhorc alphabets. Its name means '(mobile) wealth', cognate to English ''fee'' with the original meaning of 'sheep' or 'ca ...

, * uruz, *

thurisaz The rune is called Thurs (Old Norse '' Þurs'', a type of entity, from a reconstructed Common Germanic ') in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems. In the Anglo-Saxon rune poem it is called thorn, whence the name of the letter þ derived. I ...

''. The

Thai alphabet The Thai script ( th, อักษรไทย, ) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols ( th, พยัญชน� ...

is learned acrophonically, each letter being represented pictorially in school-books (chicken, egg, buffalo, snake, bell, etc.).

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

gives a fictional description of the process in one of his ''

Just So Stories ''Just So Stories for Little Children'' is a 1902 collection of origin stories by the British author Rudyard Kipling. Considered a classic of children's literature, the book is among Kipling's best known works. Kipling began working on the ...

'', "How the Alphabet was Made".Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling Modern

radiotelephony A radiotelephone (or radiophone), abbreviated RT, is a radio communication system for conducting a conversation; radiotelephony means telephony by radio. It is in contrast to ''radiotelegraphy'', which is radio transmission of telegrams (messag ...

and aviation uses spelling alphabets (the best-known of which is the

NATO Phonetic Alphabet The (International) Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used set of clear code words for communicating the letters of the Roman alphabet, technically a ''radiotelephonic spellin ...

, which begins with ''Alfa'', ''Bravo'', ''Charlie'', ''Delta''...) in which the letters of the English alphabet are arbitrarily assigned words and names in an acrophonic manner to avoid misunderstanding. Most notes of the solfege scalenamely ''re'', ''mi'', ''fa'', ''sol'', and ''la''derive their names from the first syllable of the lines of ''

Ut queant laxis "" or "" is a Latin hymn in honor of John the Baptist, written in Horatian Sapphics with text traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian. It is famous for its part in the history of musical notation, in part ...

'', a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

hymn.

References

{{Reflist Onomastics Alphabets

See also

References