Acrophony (; + 'sound') is the naming of letters of an

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

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: (), (), (), (). The paradigm for acrophonic alphabets is the

Proto-Sinaitic script The Proto-Sinaitic script is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, 30-40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as Wadi el ...

and the succeeding

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...

, in which the letter A, representing the sound , is thought to have derived from an

Egyptian hieroglyph Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters. ...

representing an ox, and is called 'ox', , which starts with the

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

sound the letter represents. 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 that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

and

early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Chur ...

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

mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

which helps students and scholars learn the alphabet: means 'I know letters, heword is good' in

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...

. In Irish and

Ogham Ogham (also ogam and ogom, , Modern Irish: ; , later ) 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 language ( scholastic ...

, 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, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only ...

s, for example A was (' white fir'), B was ('

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 3 ...

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

rune Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...

alphabets used by the Germanic peoples were also named acrophonically; for example, the first three letters, which represented the sounds /f, u, θ/, were named , , in Norse ('wealth', 'slag/rain', 'giant') and , , in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

('wealth', 'ox', 'thorn'). Both sets of names probably stemmed from

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...

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

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

gives a fictional description of the process in one of his '' Just So Stories'', "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 alphabet A spelling alphabet (#Terminology, also called by various other names) is a set of words used to represent the Letter (alphabet), letters of an alphabet in Speech, oral communication, especially over a two-way radio or telephone. The words chosen t ...

s (the best-known of which is the

NATO Phonetic Alphabet The International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet or simply the 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 Latin/Roman ...

, 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 A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

of the lines of , a

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

hymn.

References

{{Reflist Onomastics Alphabets

See also

References