The “ship of the desert,” the camel, gave its name to the third letter. Our name for this animal is traceable back to the Phoenician “gimel” (ghemel) or “gamel” (gahmel). The long neck and the peculiar angle of the neck in relation to the head could easily be represented. The Greeks made changes similar to those in other letters—they improved the shape and changed the name to “gamma.” The Romans did not forget the curve and gave it both the hard and soft sounds (kay and gay). Later on, about the third century A. D., to distinguish the “g” sound from the “k” sound they added a little bar below the opening. Thus we get both C and G from the picture of the camel.

Stevenson said that when he was a child the capital G always impressed him as a genii swooping down to drink out of a handsome cup. Kipling’s story of the invention of the alphabet is filled with similar delightful stories of the picture origin of letter forms.