alpha

Etymology

From Greek 'alpha,' from Phoenician 'āleph' (ox), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenician letter was originally a pictogram of an ox's head — if you rotate a capital A by 180 degrees, you can see the horns pointing downward. The Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet around the 8th century BCE, keeping the letter order but changing the names to fit Greek phonology. 'Āleph' became 'alpha,' 'bēth' became 'beta,' and so on. The Phoenicians listed the ox first because cattle were the most valuable possession in their pastoral economy. So the letter A, the beginning of most Western alphabets, started as a picture of livestock. Key roots: āleph (Phoenician: "ox").

Alpha traces back to Phoenician āleph, meaning "ox". Across languages it shares form or sense with Arabic alif, Hebrew aleph, French alpha and German Alpha, evidence of a shared etymological family.