San (letter) San (letter) San (Ϻ) was an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. Its shape was similar to modern M, or ϡ, or to a modern Greek Sigma (Σ) turned sideways, and it was used as an alternative to Sigma to denote the sound . Unlike Sigma, whose position in the alphabet is between Rho and Tau, San appeared between Pi and Qoppa in alphabetic order. In addition to denoting this separate archaic character, the name "San" was also used as an alternative name to denote the standard letter Sigma. The existence of the two competing letters Sigma and San is
History of the alphabet these words. From the Eastern Greek alphabet, they borrowed Y and Z, which were added to the end of the alphabet because the only time they were used was to write Greek words. The Anglo-Saxons began using Roman letters to write Old English as they converted to Christianity, following Augustine of Canterbury's mission to Britain in the sixth century. Because the Runic "wen", which was first used to represent the sound 'w' and looked like a p that is narrow and triangular, was easy to confuse with an actual p, the 'w' sound began to be written using a double