Spelling alphabets such as the ICAO spelling alphabet, used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are designed to eliminate this potential confusion by giving each letter a name that sounds quite different from any other. Some groups of letters, such as pee and bee, or em and en, are easily confused in speech, especially when heard over the telephone or a radio communications link. The novel forms are aitch, a regular development of Medieval Latin acca jay, a new letter presumably vocalized like neighboring kay to avoid confusion with established gee (the other name, jy, was taken from French) vee, a new letter named by analogy with the majority double-u, a new letter, self-explanatory (the name of Latin V was ū) wye, of obscure origin but with an antecedent in Old French wi izzard, from the Romance phrase i zed or i zeto 'and Z' said when reciting the alphabet and zee, an American levelling of zed by analogy with other consonants. Affects A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, K, O, P, T, and presumably Y.

the Great Vowel Shift, shifting all Middle English long vowels.

the inconsistent lowering of Middle English /ɛr/ to /ar/.

fronting of Latin /uː/ to Middle French /yː/, becoming Middle English /iw/ and then Modern English /juː/.

palatalization before front vowels of Latin /ɡ/ to Proto-Romance and Middle French /dʒ/.

palatalization before front vowels of Latin /k/ successively to /tʃ/, /ts/, and finally to Middle French /s/.

The regular phonological developments (in rough chronological order) are:

The names of the letters are for the most part direct descendants, via French, of the Latin (and Etruscan) names. For a letter as a letter, the letter itself is most commonly used, generally in capitalized form, in which case the plural just takes -s or -'s (e.g. Plurals of vowel names also take -es (i.e., aes, ees, ies, oes, ues), but these are rare. Plurals of consonant names are formed by adding -s (e.g., bees, efs or effs, ems) or -es in the cases of aitches, esses, exes.

The spellings listed below are from the Oxford English Dictionary. The names of the letters are commonly spelled out in compound words and initialisms (e.g., tee-shirt, deejay, emcee, okay, etc.), derived forms (e.g., exed out, effing, to eff and blind, aitchless, etc.), and objects named after letters (e.g., en and em in printing, and wye in railroading). Problems playing this file? See media help.

What letters are vowels