C

C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ˈsiː/) is spelled cee, plural cees. C comes from the same letter as G or g. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal. In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no co... more

C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ˈsiː/) is spelled cee, plural cees. C comes from the same letter as G or g. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal. In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing, so the Greek Γ (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent the /k/ phoneme. Already in the Western Greek alphabet, Gamma first took a form in Early Etruscan, then in Classical Etruscan. In Early Latin it took a form then C in Classical Latin. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /g/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used to represent /k/ or /g/ before a rounded vowel, K before /a/, and C elsewhere. During the 3rd... less