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ORIGIN OF ALPHABET
219 taken from an Aramaic source, the Aramaic language having preference for the emphatic form which ends in a vowel and drops the vowel of the preceding syllable; others consider the terminal vocalization of the Greek letters as being more in agreement with Greek speech. However, it is reasonably certain that the Greeks when they borrowed their alphabet from Semitic sources, took over the names with the letters. Therefore, we can assume that these names existed at the end of the second millennium B.C., when the Greeks adopted the Semitic alphabet, although the exact form of some of the names is uncertain.
The most ancient transliterations of the Semitic letters into their Greek equivalents and comparison with some Semitic languages, show that the early distinctions of the North Semitic alphabet between some letters (for example, between samekh and sin) were lost at a later stage. Some scholars attribute this fact to the use in later times of Aramaic, in which for example samekh displaced sin.
It is generally believed this theory was already propounded by the great German Semitist W. Gesenius--that the Semitic names were derived from the form of the object "originally represented by the signs"; 80, for example, it is commonly accepted that the second letter had originally the form of a house, and because of this form it was called beth, meaning "house." This opinion does not seem correct, although there may have been such a connection in a few cases. Generally speaking, as already suggested by the French orientalist François Lenormant in 1875, the original names of the letters seem to have been chosen independently of their form; this opinion was also held by H. Bauer.
Sethe and Dunand hold that there was a connection between the names of the letters and their original shapes. According to Dunand, the purpose of the names of the letters "was to suggest and to remind the memory of the letter in question. Although the resemblances (between the name and the object represented) were sometimes superficial, they were nevertheless real." Thus, according to Dunand, "no name is arbitrary, (except the he), all of them are simple, in common
However, the Semitic names of the letters refer mainly to everyday objects-such as house (beth), door (daleth), hook (tvaw); to parts of the body, hand (pod for yad), palm or open hand (kaph), eye ('ayin), mouth (pe), head (resh for rosh), tooth (shin for shen): to animals, ox (aleph), camel (gimel for gamal), fish (mun or samekh for samakh), monkey (qoph) - the Semitic names for which began with the very sound the letter in that is b, d, e, y, k, p, r, and so forth. The name of the last letter was simply "sign" or "mark" (taw). Some of the letters are considered by a few scholars as additions. It is noteworthy that while the majority of the names are very easy to explain, the names of the letters considered as additions are the most difficult to interpret and have not been explained satisfactorily.
