History of the letter A. The alphabet originated in Ancient Egypt with hieroglyphs, such as the bull's head (left), representing syllables. These evolved into the Phoenician alphabet (second from left) - the Phoenician name for A resembled the earlier Hebrew name aleph meaning ox . Phoenician script spread to Greece where vowels were added and the first letter was modified to alpha (second from right). Etruscan civilisation took the Greek alphabet to the Italian peninsula where it gave rise to Latin (right), which spread with the Roman Empire. Latin script was used to write the descendant languages of Latin, and then other European languages such as English.