them. But
even the information which may be had, on this point, has been strangely
overlooked by our common Latin grammarians.[89] What, but the greater care
of earlier writers, has made the Greek names better known or more important
than the Latin? In every nation that is not totally illiterate, custom must
have established for the letters a certain set of names, which are _the
only true ones_, and which are of course to be preferred to such as are
local or unauthorized. In this, however, as in other things, use may
sometimes vary, and possibly improve; but when its decisions are clear, no
feeble reason should be allowed to disturb them. Every parent, therefore,
who would have his children instructed to read and write the English
language, should see that in the first place they learn to name the letters
as they are commonly named in English. A Scotch gentleman of good education
informs me, that the names of the letters, as he first learned them in a
school in his own country, were these: "A, Ib, Ec, Id, E, Iff, Ig, Ich, I,
Ij, Ik, Ill, Im, In, O, Ip, Kue, Ir, Iss, It, U, Iv, Double-u, Ix, Wy, Iz;"
but that in the same school the English names are now used. It is to be
hoped, that all teachers will in time abandon every such local usage, and
name the letters _as they ought to be named_; and that the day will come,
in which the regular English _orthography_ of these terms, shall be
steadily preferred, ignorance of it be thought a disgrace, and the makers
of school-books feel no longer at liberty to alter names that are a
thousand times better known than their own.

OBS. 5.--It is not in respect to their _orthography_ alone, that these
first words in literature demand inquiry and reflection: the
_pronunciation_ of some of them has often been taught erroneously, and,
with respect to three or four of them, some writers have attempted to make
an entire change from the customary forms which I have recorded. Whether
the name of the first letter should be pronounced "_Aye_," as it is in
England, "_Ah_," as it is in Ireland, or "_Aw_," as it is in Scotland, is a
question which Walker has largely discussed, and clearly decided in favour
of the first sound; and this decision accords with the universal practice
of the schools in America. It is remarkable that this able critic, though
he treated minutely of the letters, naming them all in the outset of his
"Principles" subsequently neglected the names of them all, except the first
a