Before atomic orbitals were understood, spectroscopists discovered various distinctive series of spectral lines in atomic spectra, which they identified by letters. These letters were later associated with the azimuthal quantum number, ℓ. The letters, "s", "p", "d", and "f", for the first four values of ℓ were chosen to be the first letters of properties of the spectral series observed in alkali metals. Other letters for subsequent values of ℓ were assigned in alphabetical order, omitting the letter "j" because some languages do not distinguish between the letters "i" and "j":
This notation is used to specify electron configurations and to create the term symbol for the electron states in a multi-electron atom. When writing a term symbol, the above scheme for a single electron's orbital quantum number is applied to the total orbital angular momentum associated to an electron state.