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Claudian Letters




Claudian letters were developed by, and named after, the Roman Emperor Claudius (reigned 4154 ). He introduced three new letters:

  • a reversed C (''antisigma'') to replace BS and PS, much like X stood in for CS and GS, and inspired by the Greek Psi .

  • a turned F (''digamma inversum'') to represent consonantal U ( W / V ), possibly inspired by the Greek Digamma .

  • a half H to represent the sound of Greek Upsilon , a vowel sound between U and I ( Y ) in Latin words such as ''Olympicus'').


These letters were used to a small extent on public inscriptions dating from his reign but their use was abandoned after his death. Their forms were probably chosen to ease the transition, as they could be made from templates for existing letters. Claudius may have been inspired to introduce these changes by a comment his mother Antonia made to him in his youth, to the effect of that he would be as unlikely to become emperor as he would be able to change the alphabet. In time, the letter Y was added to the Latin alphabet, filling the role of the broken "H" which Claudius had promulgated.

The reversed C is also used in Roman Numerals .

These letters—along with lowercase counterparts—have been proposed for addition to Unicode .