Columbia (name) taken directly from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels while" a few others were classical or neoclassical in style. Such were Ierne for Ireland, Iberia for Spain, Noveborac for New York (from Eboracum, the Roman name for York) and Columbia for America—at the time used in the sense of "European colonies in the New World". The name was perhaps first coined by Samuel Johnson, thought to have been the author of an introductory essay (in which Columbia already appears) which explained the conceit of substituting Lilliputian for English names; Johnson also wrote down the "Debates" from 1740 to 1743. The name continued
Old English Latin alphabet "et" ligature) first, then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note "ond" (⁊), resulting in a list of 29 symbols: Old English was first written in runes ("futhorc") but shifted to a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries from around the 9th century. The Latin spellings include some conventions associated with the Italian alphabet, such as hard vs. soft "c", "g", and "sc". This was replaced by insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule