Where do the shapes of our capital letters come from?
The capital letters on this page are cousins of letters first scratched by the Phoenicians, a seafaring trading people, passed through Greeks and Etruscans before the Romans carved them in stone.
▶ Start the storyOur capitals are Roman letters, and the Romans got them through a long chain of borrowing that starts with the Phoenicians. The Latin alphabet evolved from the Etruscan alphabet, which came from a Greek alphabet used at Cumae, which was itself descended from the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks told the story that a Phoenician prince named Cadmus brought them the letters, a tale credited to the historian Herodotus.
Why did this system win? and Egyptian hieroglyphs used many complex characters and needed long training, which kept reading and writing in the hands of a small elite. The Phoenician alphabet used one symbol for one sound, so there were only a few dozen symbols to learn. It had 22 letters, all consonants, and the reader supplied the vowels. Merchants sailing around the Mediterranean carried it with them.
Then the Romans shaped it. They cut the letters into stone in what are now called Roman square capitals, the basis for modern capital letters. These capitals use straight lines, supple curves, thick and thin strokes and small finishing strokes called . You can still see them on the Pantheon, on Trajan's Column and on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
Cuneiform and hieroglyphs
- Many complex characters
- Long professional training
- Literacy for a small elite
Phoenician alphabet
- One symbol per sound
- A few dozen symbols to learn
- Spread by Mediterranean traders
The alphabet kept changing after Rome. The Romans made G from C by adding a small stroke, and took Y and Z from Greek to spell Greek words. W, a of two V's, only arrived in the Middle Ages. So the next time you type a capital, you are using a shape a Roman stonecutter would recognise.
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Recap
Phoenician letters travelled by sea to the Greeks, the Etruscans and the Romans, and the Romans carved them into the capitals we still use.
💡 A trick to remember it · Sea traders, Greek storytellers, Etruscan scribes, Roman stonecutters: four hands passed the letters on, and the last pair carved them in stone.
Surprising fact · The Romans did not use lowercase letters on monumental inscriptions, and W, a double V, only joined the alphabet in the Middle Ages.
Sources (4)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (15 claims) cites at least one of these.