The letter K comes from the
Greek letter Κ (
kappa), which was taken from the
west Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. This, in turn, was likely adapted by
Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for
"hand" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨
ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced in
Old Egyptian). The Levantine Semites evidently assigned it the sound value instead, because their word for hand started with that sound, similar to the Hebrew word for the palm of the hand "caph". K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name
ka /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named
ce (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named
qu and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest
Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds and (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms, such as
Kalendae, "the
calends". After
Greek words were taken into Latin, the kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound were also transliterated with C. Hence, the
Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The
Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into
Old English. == Use in writing systems ==