B

B, second letter and first consonant in the English alphabet; a corresponding symbol has the same place in the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets, among others. Today the name of the Greek letter b (beta, like the Phoenician beth) is used in association with alpha, in the word alphabet. The letter was derived by the Phoenicians from the Egyptian hieroglyph for “crane”, but when taken over by them it was called beth, “house”. In English, the sound represented by the letter b is a voiced bilabial stop (see Phonetics).

The evolution of the symbol may be traced as follows: