 | ThisLatin entry containsreconstructed terms and roots. As such, the term(s) in this entry are not directlyattested, but are hypothesized to have existed based oncomparative evidence. |
The earliest Latin name of H washa. The loss of /h/ in common speech before the end of the Republican period made this name indistinct froma(“the letter A”), driving its replacement by *acca much later.
The OED sees *acca as a phonological normalisation of *ahha, a reinforcement ofha (compare the later development ofmichi,nichil). Sheldon instead sees here a fusion ofha +ka(“the letter K”). He notes that the practice of Latin grammarians was to separate the alphabet into vowels, "semivowels" (continuant consonants) andmutes. The list of mutes wasB C D G H K P Q T, and in recitation of this sequence,... ge ha ka pe..., theha andka could have accreted together. This would also explain the variant form *aca, found in Portuguese.
acca(Proto-Italo-Western-Romance)