Letter names Phoenician used a system of acrophony to name letters: a word was chosen with each initial consonant sound, and became the name of the letter for that sound. These names were not arbitrary: each Phoenician letter was based on an Egyptian hieroglyph representing an Egyptian word; this word was translated into Phoenician (or a closely related Semitic language), then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's Phoenician value.Jensen (1969) p. 262-263. For example, the second letter of the Phoenician alphabet was based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for "house" (a sketch of a house); the Semitic word for 'house' was bet; hence the Phoenician letter was called bet and had the sound value b.
letter names phoenician used a system of acrophony to name letters a word was chosen with each initial consonant sound and became the name of the letter for that sound these names were not arbitrary each phoenician letter was based on an egyptian hieroglyph representing an egyptian word; this word was translated into phoenician (or a closely related semitic language) then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's phoenician valuejensen (1969) p 262-263 for example the second letter of the phoenician alphabet was based on the egyptian hieroglyph for "house" (a sketch of a house); the semitic word for 'house' was bet; hence the phoenician letter was called bet and had the sound value b