In an acrophonic alphabet the initial (Greek: acro) sound (phonos) of a word gives the name to the whole. Acrophony gives each letter in an alphabet the name of an object whose name begins with the relevant letter. This would be true in English if, for example, the letter A was called the letter Axe or Aardvark. A grapheme designates the atomic unit in written language. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... The letter A is the first (1st) letter in the Latin alphabet. ...

The canonical acrophony is an ideographic or pictographic writing system, where the letter's name and glyph both represent the same thing or concept - if e.g. the letter A in English, named "axe", was in the form of an axe. Canonical--an adjective derived from canon--essentially means standard or generally accepted or part of the backstory. ... A Chinese character. ... Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... These are the astrological glyphs as most commonly used in Western Astrology A glyph is a carved figure or character, incised or in relief; a carved pictograph; hence, a pictograph representing a form originally adopted for sculpture, whether carved or painted. ... The letter A is the first (1st) letter in the Latin alphabet. ... Firefighter with a fire-axe An axe (also spelt as ax) is a tool with a metal blade that is securely fastened at a 90 degree angle to a handle, usually of wood, while a blade fastened horizontally is called an adze. ...

The paradigm for acrophonic alphabets is the Late Bronze Age Proto-Canaanite alphabet in which the letter A, representing the sound /a/, is a pictogram representing an ox, and is called "ox" - ʾalp. The Latin alphabet is descended from the Proto-Canaanite, and you can still see the stylized head of an ox if you turn the letter A upside-down: ∀. The second letter of the Phoenician alphabet is bet (which means "house" and looks a bit like a shelter) representing the sound /b/, and from āleph-bēth we have 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 Bronze Age is a period in a civilizations development when the most advanced metalworking has developed the techniques of smelting copper from natural outcroppings and alloys it to cast bronze. ... Drawing of the 16 and 12 characters Wadi el-Hol inscriptions The Proto-Canaanite (also Proto-Sinaitic) alphabet is identified as the prototype of the Semitic alphabets that, mostly via the successful Phoenician alphabet became the ancestor of most scripts in use today. ... Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... Binomial name Bos taurus Linnaeus, 1758 Cattle are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. ...

The Glagolitic and early Cyrillic alphabets, although not consisting of ideograms, also have letters named acrophonically. The letters representing /a, b, v, g, d, e/ are named Az, Buki, Vedi, Glagol, Dobro, Est. Naming the letters in order, one recites a poem, a mnemonic which helps students and scholars learn the alphabet. Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ... The Early Cyrillic alphabet was a writing system developed in Bulgaria during the 10th century A.D. for the writing of Old Church Slavonic. ... A mnemonic (pronounced in American English, in British English) is a memory aid. ...

Rudyard Kipling gives a fictional description of the process in one of his Just So Stories, "How the Alphabet was Made." Rudyard Kipling, British author Joseph Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) was a British author and poet, born in India. ... The Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. ...

External link

• How the Alphabet was Made Kipling's story, online