lettername

A letter name is the conventional spoken designation of a letter in an alphabet. It is the label used to refer to the symbol itself, its position in the order of the alphabet, or its role as a unit in a writing system. A letter name is typically distinct from the sound the letter represents in words (its phoneme) and from the letter’s written form.

In the Latin alphabet used for English, common letter names include A, B, C, D, E, and so on, pronounced as the corresponding vowel or consonant sounds with typical English vowel qualities. Some names are single syllables (B, C, D) while others are longer or irregular (W is often said as “double u,” X as “ex,” Y as “why,” Z as “zee” or “zed”).

Other writing systems assign names that reflect tradition or phonology. Hebrew letters have names such as Aleph, Bet, Gimel. Arabic letters include Alif, Ba, Ta. Greek letters are both symbols and names, such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma. Cyrillic alphabets include names like A (a), Be, Ve. In Indic scripts such as Devanagari, consonant symbols typically have syllabic names such as ka, kha, ga, which function as units of sound rather than a standalone single-letter label in the English sense.

The concept of a letter name aids literacy, transcription, and linguistic analysis, helping speakers and writers discuss symbols independently of their phonetic values.