Opinions vary regarding the use of apostrophes when forming the plurals of letters of the alphabet.New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, after noting that the usage has changed, states on page 602 that “after letters an apostrophe is obligatory.” The 17th edition ofThe Chicago Manual of Style states in paragraph 7.15, “To aid comprehension, lowercase letters form the plural with an apostrophe and ans”. TheOxford Style Manual on page 116 advocates the use of common sense.
Speculatively, Orel and Stolbova claim a derivation from a form such asProto-Afroasiatic*dac-(“flint knife”); as with other attempts at reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic, academic consensus is lacking.
“ds (lemma ID 180610)”, “ds (lemma ID 180620)”, and “ds (lemma ID 180600)”, inThesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae[1], Corpus issue 18, Web app version 2.1.5, Tonio Sebastian Richter & Daniel A. Werning by order of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert & Peter Dils by order of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig,2004–26 July 2023
James P[eter] Allen (2010),Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,→ISBN,page106.
Orel, Vladimir E.; Stolbova, Olga V. (1995),Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a Reconstruction (Handbuch der Orientalistik;I.18), Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill, page140
