# Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 5, 2007, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704 "2007-03-05T17:55:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/21 "2012-11-12T16:43:23Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > So the story that my father told me about how the letters were arranged in the chronological order that they were invented, probably not true, eh? 🙂 Not really true, but there might be a small element of truth to it. As new letters were developed, it does stand to reason that they were mostly tacked onto the end of the alphabet. But only mostly. Many derivative letters – like V, W, and J – were placed directly after their progenitors. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/22 "2012-11-12T17:23:36Z")
I would have hoped that Kipling would have a Just So story to explain it all. ---
**Author:** ![Freakenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b782af/32.png) [@Freakenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freakenstein)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/23 "2012-11-12T19:33:45Z")
**tavaritz** You can’t be serious. > [@](#): > > the ethymological dictionary of finnish language tells us that more than 90% of words we use in everyday language are loans. Cite? > [@](#): > > So B is found in in “bisse” (beer), F is found in “finni” (zit) and Z is found in “zetaa” (sleep). I’ll concede finni as it has become more or less official ( in literary Finnish there are other ‘F-words’ too, but they are very little changed from an original foreign word, also there are some in local dialects. ) ‘Bisse’ is a slang word that’s hardly ever written, and almost always folks use word ‘kalja’ for beer. ‘Zetaa’ - never heard, although the meaning is pretty obvious. > [@](#): > > What comes to others: C is translittered to K as in “Kokis” (Coke) or S as in “shekki” (check), Q is translittered to KV as in “kveekari” (quacker), W is actually used in names but it’s pronounced just like V and all loan words substitute V, X is always translittered to KS as in “taksi” (taxi) As they are _transliterated_ they are not valid examples. > [@](#): > > and finally Å is in written finnish just fancy way to write O as in â€œĂ…Ă„tatkĂ„?” (Will you wait?), which implies that the speaker is a finnish-swede speaking finnish. That is an obvious joke. You probably made it up while You were writing this. > [@](#): > > As all those ‘foreign’ characters can exist in name in written finnish alpahebetization follows the anglosaxon norm with the following execeptions: V and W are not differentiated and Å, Ä, and Ö are added into the end. If I understand this correctly, You are saying that Finns write some names with these letters, so they must be part of Finnish alphabet. This is of course rubbish, by Your logic Swedish alphabet should include Ă© (for _idĂ©_ - which has very different meaning than _ide_ ). And since Finnish alphabet is borrowed from Sweden, Finnish alphabet should also have é  And You know Finns actually write some names with Ă©, so
 > [@](#): > > This causes problems in spreadsheet and database programs: You want to nationalize them so that you can alphabetize those Ä’s and Ö’s correctly but you don’t want to because you want to alpahabetize V and W separately. This probably meant something in Your head while You wrote it, but I can’t decipher it. > [@](#): > > Btw. The shortest entry in Helsinki phonebook used to be Å Bo. Phonebooks are listing names of people and places, not actual Finnish language itself. > [@](#): > > Then two more nitpicks: > > 1, Of course all those characters from A to Z and Å, Ä and Ö included are part of finnish language as in finnish language they are the words that represent themselves. So if someone says that Q is not in any finnish word then she is wrong as “Q” is the finnish name of the lettter Q. Wouldn’t that be transliterated _‘KVUU’_ and therefore not included in itself? > [@](#): > > 1. The whole original question is quite stupid. Alphabeth is in alphabetical order because alphabet is a sequence which order has the name alphabetical order. The proper question is: Why is alphabet in that particular order? Read thö Ă„riginĂ€l cĂ„lumn by _Thö MĂ€stö_
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**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/24 "2012-11-13T01:46:14Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > Not really true, but there might be a small element of truth to it. As new letters were developed, it does stand to reason that they were mostly tacked onto the end of the alphabet. > > But only mostly. Many derivative letters – like V, W, and J – were placed directly after their progenitors. And G (derived from C) was put into the empty space left when Z was removed. (Z was later put back at the end to spell Greek words with, after Y, which was added for the same reason. But U was put at the end when it was derived from F, and X was put at the end, too.) But the alphabet could not have been of any use until it was adequate. It did not grow by starting with zero letters and slowly adding one at a time. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/25 "2012-11-13T01:47:24Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I would have hoped that Kipling would have a Just So story to explain it all. He literally did, but he didn’t include the ordering. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/26 "2012-11-13T22:27:44Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > He literally did, but he didn’t include the ordering. I’d be interested in reading that. Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2012, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/27 "2012-11-13T22:56:12Z")
> [@Freakenstein](#): > > Phonebooks are listing names of people and places, not actual Finnish language itself. Names of people and places are part of a language. So “Washington” as the name of several people and several places is an English word, just as “Helsinki” is a Finnish word and 東äșŹ (Tƍkyƍ) is a Japanese word. Just because you can’t use proper nouns in Scrabble does not mean that they are not part of the language. ---
**Author:** ![Freakenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b782af/32.png) [@Freakenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freakenstein)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/28 "2012-11-14T18:46:39Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Names of people and places are part of a language. So “Washington” as the name of several people and several places is an English word, just as “Helsinki” is a Finnish word and 東äșŹ (Tƍkyƍ) is a Japanese word. Just because you can’t use proper nouns in Scrabble does not mean that they are not part of the language. I see You’re from Australia and You speak English there. Are you saying Wollongong, Wagga Wagga, Namatjira, Plibersek and Toka Likiliki\* are English words? ( Å Bo is Swedish and can be translated in several different ways. In Finnish it doesn’t even resemble anything. ) - However in Finnish there are slang words ‘toka’ ( the second one ) and ‘liki’ ( near or close ). So what are We to think about this? ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/29 "2012-11-14T19:53:50Z")
Anyway, what about the Eagle Shirt Company or the Red Cross? Are they _not_ English? ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2012, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/30 "2012-11-14T20:26:38Z")
> [@Freakenstein](#): > > I see You’re from Australia and You speak English there. > Are you saying Wollongong, Wagga Wagga, Namatjira, Plibersek and Toka Likiliki\* are English words? Yes. It’s very common for English words to be derived from other languages, like these. One way to recognise that they are are English words is to see what happens to them in other languages. In the first example that you give (Wollongong), we are not even sure what the original Aboriginal word was, but if you look at the Wikipedia (which links to articles in other languages) you can see that “Wollongong” translates to â€œĐŁŃƒĐ»ĐŸĐœĐłĐŸĐœĐłâ€ in Bulgarian, â€œìšžëŸ°êł”â€ in Korean and “ォロンギン” in Japanese. So “Wollongong” is not a Japanese word, but ォロンギン is one. Similarly, if the Australian Minister for Health is asked for her surname in English, she’ll tell you that it’s “Plibersek”. The fact that it’s the same in Slovenian doesn’t stop it being an English word. ---
**Author:** ![Freakenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b782af/32.png) [@Freakenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freakenstein)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2012, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704/31 "2012-11-14T22:03:33Z")
So You are saying that Wollongong is a Finnish word too? Fine, since I am writing this with alphabet used in Finland, I guess that this is written in Finnish then. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-alphabet-in-alphabetical-order/394704.md?page=1)