VIII
Names of the Letters and Objects pictured
The hitherto unknown original names and meanings of the letters and the objects pictured by them are thus disclosed for the first time through their Sumerian parent pictographic signs.
The names of the letters as A, Ba or Bi, etc., are seen to be "ideo-logic," i.e., consisting of the names of the old ideograph of the Sumerian picture writing, except in the few instances in which the ideograph consisted of more than one consonant, when the final consonant dropped out. And the objects pictured by the letter-signs are those of their respective Sumerian parent signs.
The Greek names for the letters as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc., were taken from those of the later Semitic Phœnicians, namely, Aleph an Ox, Beth a House, Gimel a Camel, Daleth a Door, etc. But these names, as has been shown by Professor Petrie and others, are "entirely a late meaning, the signs having no connection with the names ... which were but nicknames." These names are comparable to the childish nursery names of "A was an Archer" and so on. Yet it was from these trivial nicknames and their order, that after the names of the first two Alpha, Beta, our modern name for the letters as "The Alpha-bet" was derived.
55
