The C Problem

The Greek alphabet does not have the letter ‘c’. This annoying little linguistic fact has caused me great personal anguish.

The Roman alphabet does have a ‘c’. It’s the Roman alphabet from which our English letters derive. Over the centuries the original Greek names of people have been changed to look and sound more normal to our later eyes and ears. Those harsh looking ‘k’ sounds in the Greek names became ‘c’. The endings of Greek proper names were changed to make them seem less foreign. So for example, Sokratos — the man’s real name — became Socrates. Pericles was Perikles. Alexander the Great was actually Alexandros.

In the original Greek form, Nicolaos becomes Nikolaos. His nickname becomes Nike, as in the shoe company. Nico’s name translated, by the way, means something like victory of the people. Nike: victory; laos: people.

It’s all the fault of the Phoenicians. They developed the alphabet that was the ancestor of all modern European languages, including both Greek and Latin. Phoenician had two ‘K’ sounds. So they had two letters: equivalent to our modern K and Q. In ancient (really ancient) Greek these became kappa and qoppa. But Greek, like almost every language that came after it, has only a single ‘K’ sound, so the Greeks, being sensible people, dropped qoppa in archaic times. (But note that qoppa was also written for some time as koppa before disappearing entirely. Now that you know that, if you ever get to read the stories you’ll be able to spot a joke you would otherwise have missed.)

The Etruscans took their alphabet from the Greeks, who had taken theirs from the Phoenicians. Now things were getting complex, because Etruscan had no ‘G’ sound. In Greek, the ‘G’ is the third letter of the alphabet (alpha, beta, gamma…). Since gamma was a spare letter to the Etruscans, who were not a sensible people, they used it to stand for a ‘K’ sound as well. When the Romans took their alphabet from the Etruscans (who took it from the Greeks, who took it from the Phoenicians) they had an embarrassment of riches in the ‘K’ department. So in the Latin alphabet the third letter ‘G’ became ‘C’, the real ’G’ moved back in the order, and that is why modern English has three ‘K’ sounds: C, K and Q.

All this is explained in more detail and great clarity at Michael Quinion’s erudite website on the English language.

Modern scholars abhor the popular names of the Greeks for reasons of linguistic purity. They want the names to be written as the Greeks themselves would have done. This left me with a problem: should I use the linguistically correct names, or the ones most familiar to my readers? Would people be happy reading Sokratos instead of Socrates?

I opted for the ‘c’ forms, knowing I would be flayed alive by outraged scholars. I’m sorry guys, but ease of reading is much more important than linguistic purity. Some of those Greek names are difficult enough for modern eyes without making it worse when I don’t have to. What I have done is use the popular forms of well known names. Since I have used ‘c’ forms for main characters, it would not make sense if I didn’t continue the practice for all people names. Placenames likewise I have stuck to popular form where one exists; I’m sure everyone would rather read Sparta than Lacedaemon. Just to be contrary, I have retained ‘k’ for some concepts and places which are so foreign they can’t disturb anyone, so I have spelt the Olympic martial arts sport as Pankration.

There is actually a standard for transliteration, developed by the International Standards Organisation, which is a part of the United Nations. The standard is called ISO843. I have largely ignored it.

Any angry scholars who need a cathartic experience can send me their hate mail and/or death threats. There’s a “Meet the Author” link on the home page!