R

Nov 12 2011

In the modern Latin alphabet “R” is the 18^th letter. Frequency of R’s usage in words among all other alphabet is 5.987%.This letter is often confused with some other letters in some scripts.

Historical trace

The initial Semitic letter is derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph for tp which represents “head”. It was added into the Greek and Latin alphabet as Ρ ῥῶ (rhô) and R respectively. Later Etruscan and Western Greek languages have added some strokes to distinguish the letter“R” from the the letter “p”.

Egyptian hieroglyph	Phoenician resh	Etruscan R	Later Etruscan R	Greek Rho

Pictorial representations from medieval ages

This form of “R” is from the script Old Roman square capitals.

This form is from the script rustic capital script which was written with curved lines.

This picture shows the uncial R.

This is the representation of New Roman cursive. It was written by using a single curved line

When “r” is used in pre-Carolingian minuscule scripts or National Hands, it has various forms in its appearance and can be easily confused with some other similar letters.

This form of “r” belongs to the 6th century’s half uncial script. In this type of representation “r” seems curvy and broad. The Curl that resides at the top was made to come down so it was created the image that resembles n.

This picture shows the representation of “r” from the 8^th century’s old northern Italian book hand.

This representation is from Merovingian minuscule or Germanic book hand .

This representation is the variation of Merovingian minuscule. Formally it is known as Luxeuil minuscule.

This representation is from the script Visigoth which shows neat, compact form of “r”.

This representation is from the script known as insular half uncial. It is written with a long curve which comes down to the baseline. That actually makes the “r” to look like n.