Two fence posts and three horizontal boards gave us our eighth letter, H. The fence was called "cheth" (haith). The Greeks omitted the upper and lower boards thus making it like our H, and called it "eta" (ata). The Romans gave it a soft sound H (hah) just as we do today.
The parts of the human body also played an important part in giving form to the letters of the alphabet. The early peoples recognized the value of the hand and the head and these members gave rise to the letters I and K, and Q and R respectively. The hand in profile bent at the knuckles and wrist gives us the character "yod" (the hand) as used by the Phoenicians. The Greeks, who always liked to have their words end in vowels, added "a" and called it "Iota" (e-o´ta). When the Romans received it, it was simply a vertical stroke, I (ee) which represented the same long "e" sound as it did with the Greeks, but later they used it both as a consonant and vowel, differentiating the consonant by making the letter I longer, J; but they did not give a distinct letter form for the capital J until the sixteenth century.
The small j came into being nearly a century later. The dot over the i was first introduced in a thirteenth century manuscript.
[Illustration: Genealogy of Our Letters from the Phoenician Alphabet 1300 B.C.
Until the 3rd Century B.C. the character _c_ represented the sounds of both _g_ and _k_ when a slight modification of the character _c_ was made for the _g_ sound.
In a table of this sort, dates, forms, and even meanings must be arbitrary. For instance, _Koph_ can be spelled _Goph_ or _Qoph_; He may have no meaning; _Lamed_ (_Lamedh_) may mean _teacher's rod_; _Samech_ (_Samekh_) may mean _fish_ or _fulcrum_; _Zayin_ may mean _olive_ or _balance_.]
The silhouette of the open hand, with its radiating lines, discloses the origin of the letter K, "kaph," which signified hollow or palm. We know that palmistry was practiced by the ancients, and probably the association of reading the hand and writing influenced the inclusion of this character. The Greeks added their favorite vowel sound, "a," again and thus obtained their "Kappa." The Romans had no need for this letter at first, as C furnished the same sound. When they did accept it, they made no change.