Our modern English alphabet, consisting of 26 letters, is sometimes taken for granted. But if someone were to say that the letter “a” was no longer the first letter in the sequence, the outcry and ensuing chaos would be swift and widespread. For all of us, “a” naturally comes first — in the alphabet, in school grades, and in expressions such as “A to Z” and “A-list.” Even the word “alphabet” comes from the Greek alphabetos, itself from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the alphabet. 

But why is “a” the first letter, and not “b,” or “m,” or any other? After all, we don’t have to stick to an established sequence — QWERTY keyboards do away with alphabetic order altogether, and we use them every day. Here we take a voyage of discovery spanning thousands of years to find out how our alphabet evolved, where the letter “a” comes from, and why it is first in our alphabet. 

The evolution of our modern alphabet begins somewhere between 1700 and 1500 BCE on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Here, a group of Semitic-speaking people, quite likely the Phoenicians, developed a writing system that would change the world: a streamlined alphabet of 22 letters that was vastly more efficient and easier to learn than pictographic symbols such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, which required hundreds of individual symbols.  

This new system of letters was highly practical and soon spread across the region. But the Phoenician alphabet was what linguists call an “abjad” — it contained only consonants and no vowels. Readers were expected to supply the vowel sounds from context, which worked fairly well for Semitic languages in which vowels were largely predictable from the consonant root of a word. But it didn’t work so well for other languages. 

So, when the Greeks encountered the alphabet sometime around 1000 BCE, they recognized its potential but had to spruce it up a little: They added vowels. The result was the world’s first true alphabet, one with both consonants and vowels. This new, refined alphabet became the foundation for Latin (via the Romans), which became the basis for virtually every alphabet used in Europe today, including ours. 

The modern English alphabet is more accurately called the Germanic alphabet. It developed from the Latin alphabet to be used in English, German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, and related languages. Other alphabets that developed from Latin include the Romance (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.), Slavic (Polish, Czech, Slovak, etc.), Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian), and Finno-Ugric (Finnish, Hungarian, etc.) alphabets.

Like most letters, the letter “a” began life as a picture — its roots can be traced to an Egyptian hieroglyph that represents an ox’s head. In early Semitic writing, this symbol was turned into the letter aleph — the ancestor of “a” — which also took the form of an ox’s head. Fascinatingly, the ox can still be seen today. If you take the modern capital letter “A” and turn it upside down, you can clearly see an ox’s head with its two horns. 

When the Greeks adopted aleph, they used it to represent the vowel “a” and renamed it alpha. They also changed the letter’s orientation: Where the Phoenicians drew the letter with the ox’s nose pointing sideways, the Greeks remodeled it on geometrical lines and rotated it upright, so it stood on its horns — the modern capital “A.” So, while the original ox head symbol of “a” has been rotated and abstracted over three millennia, its root symbology has never entirely disappeared.

And now we get to the crux of the matter: Why does the letter “a” come first in the alphabet? We know that “a” has stood at the head of the alphabet throughout its known history. But here, somewhat unsatisfactorily, is where certainty runs out. “A” has been first since at least the Phoenician alphabet and possibly in earlier Semitic writing systems that preceded it. But why exactly it sat in first place originally, we cannot say for sure. The Phoenicians left no record explaining their letter order, and the question has been debated by linguists and historians for generations.

Several theories exist, but none of them are proven. It’s possible that the Semitic alphabet followed some kind of order established by earlier Egyptian hieroglyphics, or that each letter had some kind of numerical equivalent that determined the sequence. It’s also possible that there was some kind of mnemonic device that gave rise to the arrangement, but if that was the case, any evidence has long been lost to time. 

Another common theory highlights the importance of the ox in ancient civilizations. In these agricultural societies, the ox was the most valuable animal a family could own — used for plowing, a source of food, and a clear measure of wealth. It could be that aleph — the ox — gained its primacy simply because of the animal’s high status. However, this theory is impossible to verify.

Of course, as with many things in history, it may be that the order of the alphabet was largely or entirely accidental — just a quirk of historical fate. What we do know for sure is that once it had been established, the order became self-reinforcing: Each generation learned the alphabet and passed it down to the next, with “a” firmly in place at the start. No matter how it earned its place at the head of the alphabet, it steadfastly maintained it — becoming one of the most long-lasting human conventions still in daily use. 

Why can we still decipher phrases such as “ths sntnc s mssng vwls” and “tihs senetnce si all jeubmld up”? Humans can understand typos and incomplete words because our brains process language through patterns, context, and prediction, not perfect spelling. Instead of reading letter by letter, the brain takes in whole words and sentences simultaneously, allowing it to fill in gaps when letters are missing or rearranged. This means that while reading, the brain constantly makes educated guesses, and it’s surprisingly good at them.

The brain looks for patterns in everything we do. Musicians use pattern recognition to read music, mathematicians use patterns to solve equations, and physicians rely on patterns for accurate diagnoses. The same is true for language comprehension. Instead of parsing out every single letter in a word, the brain makes predictions. Even if a word is misspelled, the brain can typically decipher it because it processes multiple letters at once and quickly matches them to familiar patterns.

This process develops as children learn to read. It allows us to recognize patterns in speech and text to understand their meaning. We also use it to detect grammatical structures and predict upcoming words. This supports many communication skills, such as reading comprehension and learning new languages.

To recognize a word pattern, the brain sends information to the fusiform gyrus, a structure that plays a crucial role in processing complex visual information. A specialized area on the left side of the fusiform gyrus, known as the visual word form area (VWFA), processes letter patterns and words. Regions on the right side handle face and object recognition.

Language is highly redundant — a driving principle behind the brain’s ability to decipher missing letters using pattern recognition. According to American polymath Claude Shannon’s The Mathematical Theory of Communication, English is about 50% redundant, meaning not every letter or word carries entirely new information. In fact, most languages are around 50% redundant.

This means that when communicating via text or speech, about half of the letters or words are chosen freely, while the other half are constrained by the language’s statistical structure. In other words, if up to half of the words of this article were removed at random, you could probably still understand it — though this depends on other factors, such as context.

Similarly, if “hlf of te ltrs r rmvd in stnce,” the sentiment can still be understood. However, if more than 50% of the words or letters are removed, comprehension begins to break down, and it is much harder to decode.

Typos with missing vowels are often easier to read than those with missing consonants because the brain is better at recognizing vowel patterns than consonants. Moreover, some experts propose that consonants are more important than vowels for word processing. In many languages, consonants provide the core structure of most words.

When reading altered words, the brain uses common letter combinations, many of which involve vowels. Common examples include bigrams (“er” and “in”) and trigrams (“ion” and “ing”). Because these letters are closely associated with each other, the brain can fill in the gaps to reconstruct words like “fnd” (“find,” using the bigram “in”) and “actn” (“action,” using the trigram “ion”).

In everyday use, abbreviations rely mostly on consonants, and we rarely struggle to interpret them. This includes professional titles such as “Dr.,” “Mgr.,” and “Asst.,” as well as common internet abbreviations like “nvm” (never mind) and “bc” (because).

Along with pattern recognition, the brain relies heavily on context in a process called top-down processing. Context includes surrounding words, prior knowledge, social context, visual context, and the topic of conversation. For example, take the misspelled word “blnk.” Alone, it could mean “blank” or “blink,” but in context the meaning becomes clear: “He was off in the blnk of an eye.” This is what makes crossword puzzles and word games such as Wheel of Fortune possible. Without the helpful clues — context — participants would have a more difficult time deciphering the puzzles.

Context also helps us spot tricky typos. “Typoglycemia” —  a neologism combining“typo” and “glycemia” — is a term referring to the idea that words remain readable if their first and last letters remain intact. Try to read this example: “The barin reiles on paetrtn rocognitien.” While it is helpful to have the first and last letters remain the same, this method relies heavily on context and familiarity, as individual words are difficult to decipher when isolated.

Together, pattern recognition, prediction, and context allow us to communicate efficiently without being slowed down by minor typos. We easily breeze past misspellings and intentional abbreviations without even noticing them in text messages, social media, emails, and autocorrect errors. Even with missing or scrambled letters, your brain focuses on the story, not the spelling.

More than 7,100 languages are spoken on Earth today, ranging from island tongues with only a few hundred speakers to the global giants Mandarin and English. These languages represent a dazzling array of linguistic constructs, each with its own sounds, grammar, and logic. And among them are languages that might seem almost alien to the average English speaker: languages that use clicks and whistles, those that have no words for describing numbers or colors, and, in the case of the Rotokas language, one with an alphabet of only 12 letters. 

Despite their obvious differences, the languages of our world also share many fascinating similarities. These striking consistencies are known as linguistic universals — patterns that are hypothesized to be true for all human languages. (There is some debate involved as to how absolutely universal certain elements are, but they are, at the very least, prevalent.) Take a look at six things that are the same in almost every language. 

Nearly all documented languages clearly distinguish between things and actions/states — nouns and verbs, respectively — in some form. The categories may include different words, and the line can blur, but the underlying distinction is near-universal. This likely reflects how human cognition is organized: We perceive the world as objects moving through time and doing things to each other. In this way, language can be understood as cognition made audible. 

But some languages do blur the noun-verb boundary. The Salish languages, spoken in the Pacific Northwest, are a notable outlier with no clear distinction between nouns and verbs — for example, the root word for “fish” can mean “to fish,” “the fisher,” “the fishing,” or “there is a fish.” In Samoan, too, the verb-noun relationship is unusually flexible, with the same word appearing in positions that English would reserve strictly for either nouns or verbs. English has a history of turning nouns into verbs (and vice versa), but these examples are very much exceptions — and only to a certain degree — to what can otherwise be considered an almost universal rule. 

Every language has a way to ask a question and, in turn, give an answer. Humans are inherently curious, social creatures, and the ability to request information from others is so fundamental to cooperation that no culture has ever evolved without it — questions and answers are true linguistic universals. Polar questions are those that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” — such as, “Are you hungry?” These straightforward questions are among the most common types in most languages, but some languages don’t have defined, direct equivalents for “yes” and “no.” Irish is one such language, which instead relies on echo responses to answer questions, in which the verb from the question is repeated in the answer to indicate affirmation or negation (Q: Are you hungry? A: I am not). So, while all languages have the ability to ask questions and give answers, they don’t always do so in the same way.  

Spatial reference — known in linguistics as spatial deixis — is the ability to locate things relative to the speaker, and it’s universal to every known language. Languages have at minimum a two-way distinction between proximal (“here” or “near me”) and distal (“there” or “away from me”). But some languages have more elaborate systems. In Spanish, for example, there is a three-way system: aquí (“here,” “near me”), ahí (“there,” “near you”), and allí (“over there,” “far from both”). Other languages are even more complex — some Australian Aboriginal languages, for example, incorporate a fourth or fifth spatial distinction based on elevation and topographical elements (such as uphill/downhill or upstream/downstream). No matter the system in place, the universality of “here” and “there” is only logical — as humans, we are always somewhere, and language has to account for that. 

In many languages across the world, the words for “mother” and “father” are very similar. Mother words are particularly consistent, and the reason is fascinating. They often begin with a nasal sound (“m” or to a lesser degree “n”) — for example, mama in Spanish, maman in French, mamay in Quechua, and maa in Hindi — simply because these are among the very first babbling sounds a human baby can make, requiring almost no coordination of the lips or tongue. And once babies are capable of saying the “ma” sound, they soon learn to say “pa” and “da,” which accounts for the global similarity in words for “father,” such as “daddy” and the Spanish papá. In other words, it was babies who invented the words for “mother” and “father,” and they did it almost everywhere, independently, across the world. 

Every language on Earth uses onomatopoeia — words that imitate the sounds they describe. From the bark of a dog to the hum of an insect, humans instinctively try to recreate the noises of the animal world with their voices. In English, a dog goes “woof” and a bee goes “buzz” — but in Japanese it’s wan-wan for a dog (or au au for a smaller dog) and būn for a bee, in French it’s ouaf-ouaf and bzzz, and in Afrikaans it’s boef and zoem. They all reflect how each language hears and reproduces noises using their own set of speech sounds. While the exact imitation varies from culture to culture, the impulse is universal: Language takes cues from its environment and turns common sounds into words.  

All human languages use similes and metaphors. Both are universal cognitive and linguistic devices, acting as foundational tools that allow speakers to describe new, abstract, or complex concepts by comparing them to known, concrete experiences. And metaphorical thought isn’t just a feature of flowery prose and poetry — it represents how the human mind works and helps us to better understand our world. 

Of course, metaphors, similes, and idioms differ greatly from one language to the next. While in English, for example, you can metaphorically be “caught with your pants down,” the Swedish equivalent is “sitting with your beard in the letter box.” And if someone “has a screw loose” in English, in Portuguese they might have “little monkeys in the attic.” So, while the concept of metaphors is universal, the metaphors themselves are distinct. 

Forty-five individuals have held the role of president of the United States, and their names have been etched into the annals of history. While those monikers hold historical importance, they also possess etymological significance — each presidential surname provides us with a fascinating glimpse into the clans and cultures that past POTUSes were born into. Here’s a look at the origins and meanings behind every president’s last name.

The surname of the very first president is a habitational (meaning related to a place) name of English origin. According to Ancestry.com, it likely refers to the town of Washington in County Durham. The name of that town is derived from the Old English personal name Hwassa, combined with the connective -ing-, and finally the suffix –tūn (which means “estate” or “farmstead”).

Two presidents — John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams — share the surname Adams. Their name is a patronymic (meaning from the father’s heritage) of English origin, derived from the personal name Adam.

The name Jefferson — as in Thomas Jefferson — is a patronymic that originated in Middle English. It combines the personal name Jeffrey with the suffix “–son,” as in the phrase “Jeffrey’s son.” The name was pronounced as Jeffrason during the Middle Ages, but the vowel sound was shortened over time, resulting in the modern pronunciation.

Madison is a patronymic variant of the names Mattison and Mattinson, both meaning “son of Matthew.” The middle consonant shifted from a /t/ sound to a /d/ sound over time, resulting in the surname of President James Madison.

The surname of President James Monroe is a variant of the Scottish name Munro. The latter is a nickname of the Gaelic Rothach, which means “man from Ro” — referring to the river Roe in Derry.

While Andrew Jackson was born in the land that would become the Carolinas, his father migrated from Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland. From there they brought the last name Jackson — a patronymic meaning “Jack’s son.”

Van Buren is of Dutch origin, and in fact, President Martin Van Buren spoke Dutch as a child before he learned English. The name features two parts — Van means “from” or “by,” while Buren refers to the Dutch municipality of Buren.

The surname Harrison is shared by President William Henry Harrison and his grandson Benjamin. It’s a patronymic of English origin that means “Harry’s son” — Harry being a popular variant/pronunciation of the name Henry.

President John Tyler has the first occupational surname of any past POTUS. It’s derived from the Old French tieuleor or the Middle English tiler(e), both of which mean “tiler,” a person who lays floor or roof tiles.

James K. Polk was of Scots-Irish descent. Polk is a shortened variant of the name Pollock, which is a habitational name referring to an area in Glasgow.

President Zachary Taylor’s surname is widely used throughout the British Isles. It’s an occupational surname that comes from the Middle English word “taillour,” which is derived from the Latin verb taliare, meaning “to cut” — something a tailor does often.

The last name of President Millard Fillmore is of English origin. It’s believed to be a habitational name that refers to a place called Fyllymore in the village of Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.

President Franklin Pierce’s surname comes from the Middle English name “Piers,” which is a variant of the Old French names Pierre and Per (the French forms of Peter). The name is commonly spelled “Pearce” throughout England, while “Pierce” is the more common spelling in Wales and the United States.

The surname of the 15th president, James Buchanan, originated in Scotland. It’s a habitational name that refers to the parish of Buchanan in Stirlingshire.

Honest Abe’s last name is a habitational name of English origin. It comes from the town of Lincoln, a place that combines the British term Lindo- (“lake”) and the Latin colonia (“settlement”).

Johnson is yet another English patronymic to make this list of presidential surnames. It means “John’s son,” and it applies to both Andrew Johnson of the Reconstruction era as well as Lyndon B. Johnson of the Civil Rights era.

Ulysses S. Grant was far from the tallest president, measuring just 5 feet, 8, but his surname suggests the opposite. Grant is a word of Norman origin derived from graund,meaning “tall or large.”

The surname Hayes — as in that of the 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes — is a habitational name of Norman origin. It comes from the Old English hǣse, which means “land overgrown with brushwood.”

In addition to being the name of a U.S. president and a grumpy cartoon cat, Garfield is a topographic name of English origin. It combines the Middle English “gor(e)” (“triangular piece”) with “feld” (“open field”) to describe those who lived on open swaths of land.

There’s no denying that Chester A. Arthur was America’s 21st president, but there is a bit of dispute over the origins of his surname. Some believe it’s derived from the Gaelic term art or the Welsh arth, both meaning “bear.” Others say it comes from the Latin family name Artorius, which is defined as “noble.”

Cleveland is an English habitational surname, and it refers to several British locations throughout Devon, Essex, and North Yorkshire. It’s a combination of the Old English words clif-, meaning “bank,” and –land, which (unsurprisingly) means “land.”

William McKinley’s last name is an anglicized form of the Gaelic Mac Fhionnlaigh. That name is a patronymic derived from Fionnlaoch — a popular Gaelic personal name that’s more commonly spelled as “Finley” today.

Presidential cousins Theodore and Franklin share the last name Roosevelt. The name is a habitational surname of Dutch origins. It refers to either a farm called Rozenveld or a farm called Ruiseveld. Those names combine the Middle Dutch terms rose (“wild rose”) with velt (“open country”).

Taft is a variant of the English surname Toft, which is derived from the Old Norman term Topt, denoting those who lived in the forest. In the U.S., it’s best known as the surname of the 27th president, William Howard Taft.

President Woodrow Wilson brought the trend of patronymic presidential surnames into the 20th century. His last name comes from Middle English and means “Will’s son.”

The last name Harding — as in that of President Warren G. Harding — comes from the Old English heard, meaning “hard, harsh, strong, etc.” This evolved to Hearding, which means “the hard one,” and was eventually Americanized to Harding.

Silent Cal’s surname has uncertain origins, though there are some probable theories. It’s believed that Coolidge may refer to tenant farmers who worked on college farms across England, which were owned by universities (hence their name).

The last name Hoover is an anglicized version of the German Huber. That word refers to any prosperous farm or land owner, as Hube is a German term for a large tract of land.

Truman is said to be an Americanized version of the German Trumann or Trautmann. Those are the words for someone who can be described as a “true man” — i.e., a reliable and trustworthy person.

Ike’s surname is an Americanized version of the German Eisenhauer. That last name is an occupational name used for iron workers. Īsen means “iron,” whereas houwaære is a version of the verb houwen, meaning “to cut.”

The famed Kennedy family is notably of Irish descent. Their last name comes from the Gaelic Ó Ceannéidigh, which is a combination of the words ceann, meaning “head,” and éidigh, meaning “ugly” — a bit surprising since President John F. Kennedy and his descendants are regarded for their good looks.

Richard Nixon’s last name is a Middle English patronymic. It’s derived from the name Nik(k)e — a shortened form of the name Nicholas — and essentially means “Nick’s son.”

The surname Ford is a topographic name that describes people living near a ford, a shallow part of any river or stream. It’s derived from Middle English and is widely used to describe places throughout Britain. 

However, President Gerald Ford was actually born under a different name: Leslie Lynch King Jr. That birth surname comes from the Old English cyning, meaning “ruler.” He changed his name to honor his stepfather, who raised him.

The name Carter is an English occupational surname, referring to someone transporting goods using a cart. While the name comes directly from Middle English, it evolved from the Anglo-Norman French caretier and the Latin carettarius.

Reagan is a variant of the Irish Regan, which is a shortened form of O’Regan. That name is an anglicized take on the Gaelic Ó Ríagáin, referring to descendents of Ríagán, which is a personal name meaning “impulsive” or “furious.”

The name Bush applies to two former U.S. presidents: George H. W. and his son George W. It’s an English topographical surname referring to people who live near bushy areas. It comes from the Middle English “bushe,” which is derived from the Old Norse buskr.

The surname Clinton likely originated in the British Isles. One theory is that it refers to the settlement Glympton in Oxfordshire, with that name meaning a  settlement (tūn) located on the River Glyme (glym being Celtic for “bright stream”).

The surname Obama is associated with the Luo people of Kenya, where it translates to “slightly bent.” It holds great resonance in that culture, signifying the power of destiny, even with all of life’s twists and turns.

The Trump surname can be traced back to the German name Drumpf, which originated in the 16th century. It’s associated with the nickname Rumpf — a Middle High German term meaning “trunk body” that was used to describe large men.

Biden is believed to be a habitational name from English, specifically referring to the village of Baydon in Wiltshire. There are also occupational connections; the name could refer to button-makers, as it may be derived from the French boton, meaning “button.”