N
Fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet
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Interest in “N” spiked on Wikipedia on 2026-02-25.
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Key Takeaways
- N , or n , is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide.
- History One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like the English ⟨J⟩ , because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet .
- Some hold that they used the same snake symbol to represent N, with a great proponent of this theory being Alan Gardiner, because their word for "snake" may have begun with n (an example of a possible word being nahash ).
- The name for the letter in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic alphabets is nun , which means "fish" in some of these languages.
- The sound value of the letter was /n/ —as in Greek, Etruscan, Latin, and modern languages.
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is en (pronounced ), plural ens.
History
One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like the English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet. It is speculated by some, such as archeologist Douglas Petrovich, that Semitic speakers working in Egypt adapted hieroglyphs to create the first alphabet.
Some hold that they used the same snake symbol to represent N, with a great proponent of this theory being Alan Gardiner, because their word for "snake" may have begun with n (an example of a possible word being nahash). However, this theory has become disputed. The name for the letter in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic alphabets is nun, which means "fish" in some of these languages. This possibly connects the letter to the hieroglyph for a water ripple, which phonetically makes the n sound. The sound value of the letter was /n/—as in Greek, Etruscan, Latin, and modern languages.
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