153
votes
Accepted
Why are names starting with a "J" common, while words starting with a "J" are uncommon?
A lot of the "J" names in English are from the Bible and would have originally been written with an initial I in Latin, as the letter J did not get started until the Renaissance. In modern ...
89
votes
Accepted
Where does “ö” fall in alphabetical ordering?
TL;DR: Ignore diacritics when sorting English — except to break ties.
When sorting English text — but not the text of various other languages — one does not distinguish letters with and without ...
82
votes
Accepted
Is "I" an alphabet or a letter?
In standard US and UK usage, an alphabet is a system or collection of letters, a letter being
A written symbol or character representing a speech sound and being a component of an alphabet. [AHD]
In ...
20
votes
Is "I" an alphabet or a letter?
Technically, one letter could be an alphabet. By the definition you provided, an alphabet is a set of symbols or letters. This set could theoretically contain any number of letters.
The Latin ...
15
votes
Why are names starting with a "J" common, while words starting with a "J" are uncommon?
A further point is that many of these names are essentially the same name. Your list of 18 names:
Jack, Jackie, Jackson, Jill, Janet, Jeremy, Jeremiah, Jake, Jesus, Jacob, Jock, John, Johnny, Jon, ...
14
votes
Why does English omit diacritics on foreign names?
I, an ignorant, lazy, hubristic, and (most-importantly) impatient American, need to add this preface, so I will have enough letters for this to be counted as an answer.
One word:
Keyboard
Please, ...
12
votes
Accepted
With character or sign
& comes from a Latin scribal abbreviation for et (⁊ which was used as an alternative to & in Old English and is still used that way in Modern Irish comes from a different form of the same ...
12
votes
Is there a collective word for the different "alphabets" used by different languages?
I tend to follow Omniglot and call them writing systems. This is because Omniglot - and I believe linguistics generally - uses different terms depending on certain characteristics of the writing ...
10
votes
Accepted
Difference between Letter and Alphabet in English
It may be worth noting that in Indian English, the word alphabet can take on a similar meaning to letter, which can cause confusion.
In standard English, the difference is basically that an alphabet ...
9
votes
Is there any shorter pronunciation of W than double-U?
The letter W is known in the NATO phonetic alphabet as "whiskey". I am not sure if that counts as "semi-officially accepted" though.
8
votes
A perfect (honest) pangram that is understandable for a regular native user?
A Google search turned up a number of candidates.
With 28 letters, there are a few which can be made:
Waltz job vexed quick frog nymphs (courtesy of Ronan)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
...
8
votes
Is there a formal spelling for the English letter names?
Formal yes, universal no. Here's one:
We have included each letter with its name and plural below the list of examples. The United States uses zee, while other countries use zed.
A a ...
7
votes
Why does English omit diacritics on foreign names?
The answer is obvious: Modern Standard English does not have diacritics. Why would you expect English copy to include non-English characters? If someone wants to write my English name in a non-English ...
7
votes
Difference between Letter and Alphabet in English
A letter is a particular symbol used in writing, an alphabet is the set of all the letters.
Here is a letter: A
Here is an alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
7
votes
Is there a collective word for the different "alphabets" used by different languages?
The Unicode standard, and ISO 15924: Codes for the representation of names of scripts use the term script.
So, there is the Latin script, the Han script (which contains the Chinese hànzì / Japanese ...
7
votes
Why are names starting with a "J" common, while words starting with a "J" are uncommon?
As pointed out in one of the answers above, the commonest names in English are biblical: John/Johan/Jean/Juan, James/Jacob, Joshua/Jesus, Joseph, Judah/Judas, etc., all of which are Hebrew in origin, ...
6
votes
What non-alphabetic characters are valid in English spelling?
No. A hyphen can appear in an English word as well. For example:
a five-year-old boy
6
votes
Accepted
NATO and US Finance Spelling alphabets - Which is more commonly used in everyday situations?
It really doesn't matter much what spelling alphabet you stick to, unless you are working in a specific branch of industry where people expect a specific alphabet.
In general, people just want to ...
6
votes
Accepted
Why is the letter "w" not pronounced "double v"?
No. The letter "u" was written like a "v".
From here,
Roman alphabet for Latin
The Romans used just 23 letters to write Latin:
6
votes
Accepted
What Character Was Removed from the Alphabet?
According to the Wikipedia page on the Ampersand, this is true.
The ampersand often appeared as a letter at the end of the Latin alphabet, as for example in Byrhtferð's list of letters from 1011. ...
6
votes
Meaningful English sentences containing very few distinct letters
This one has four distinct letters:
Madam, I'm Adam.
It's also notable because it is a palindrome, and it was also the first sentence uttered by a human being (joke).
5
votes
Why does English omit diacritics on foreign names?
As mentioned in comments, since the diacritical markings (and crossed-letter letters) don't (generally and currently) have an analog in English language, the markings will be ignored for the common ...
5
votes
Why does English omit diacritics on foreign names?
In a note appended to the question, the OP says 'I am only talking about names using the Latin alphabet, I am not talking about transliterated names'. This implies that the OP regards it as ...
5
votes
Why does English omit diacritics on foreign names?
I think it is an attempt to appropriate the word (into English), and I believe it is quite common (in the sense that this is what language users do and will do).
For example, the name of the German ...
5
votes
Accepted
& as a letter in the alphabet?
According to Wikipedia, the ampersand originated as a ligature in Roman scripts of the letters e an t to represent the Latin word et, meaning and. According to the OED, citing Longman's Magazine (...
5
votes
Why do some nicknames have no apparent relation with their original counterparts?
While @Josh's answer is good and provides quite a lot of historical background for some of the specific nicknames, it doesn't completely address why, in general, names are truncated: the nicknames you'...
5
votes
When did '&' stop being taught alongside the alphabet?
If '&' has ever been a letter of any alphabet, then it involved a very strange idea of what an alphabet it. It is the only 'letter' that that spells only one word, namely the word it 'spells'. ...
5
votes
Did English have any alphabet or writing before it adopted Latin?
Futhorc was a runic alphabet of Anglo-Saxon tribes that developed out of northwestern Germanic/Scandinavian runes (Elder Futhark). Wikipedia tells us they were likely used to write Old English (Anglo-...
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