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By [[1600 BC]], the [[Phoenician alphabet]]'s letter had a linear form that served as the basis for all later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]] [[aleph]].
When the [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greeks]] adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the [[glottal stop]] that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other [[Semitic languages]], so they used the sign for the vowel {{IPA|/ɑ/}}, and changed its name to [[alpha (letter)]]. In the earliest Greek inscriptions, dating to the [[8th century BC]], the letter rests upon its side, but in the [[Greek alphabet]] of later times it generally resembles the modern capital letter, although many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.
The [[Etruscans]] brought the Greek alphabet to what was [[Italy]] and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the [[Old Italic alphabet|Etruscan alphabet]] to write [[Latin]], and the resulting letter was preserved in the modern [[Latin alphabet]] used to write many languages, including [[English language|English]].
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