Marco Cimarosti scripsit:

> K ['kappa] (??)

Just [ka].

> V [wu] (?)

Just [u].

> Y ['ypsilon] (?)
> Z ['dze:ta] (?)

Probably.

> My biggest doubts are with letters "H" (Was it really named ['hakka]? If it
> wasn't, where do Italian "acca", and French "hache" come from?)

It was indeed. English [eitS], or [heitS] in some dialects, is also a
descendant. German "ha" is probably by analogy with "ka", as English
[dZeI] for "j" is by analogy with [keI] for "k".

> "K" (Did it really have a Greek name? If it did, what's the
> reason? Unlike "Y" and "Z", "K" has always been in the Latin alphabet?).

No. It was called [ka] to distinguish it from [ke] and [ku], according to
the archaic Latin rules for using "k", "c", and "q": use "k" before "a",
as in "kalends"; use "q" before consonantal "v"; and use "c" elsewhere.
The last rule allows "qui" [kwi] to be distinguished from "cui" [kuj].
Later, almost all instances of "k" were replaced with "c".

> Moreover, what was the gender of letter names? which declensions did they
> have? were the vowel of monosyllabic names short or long?

Probably indeclinable; about gender, I would guess feminine, but I might be
quite wrong. The vowel was surely short on the Spanish evidence, which
shows [be], not [bje].

> And why do some letter names ("L", "M", "N", "R", "S" and, most puzzling,
> "F") have vowel [e] before the consonant rather than after it?

With the exception of H, K, and Q, the rule was: append [e] to a stop, prepend
[e] to a fricative or continuant. These rules were worked out by the
Etruscans, and were IMHO one of their greatest contributions to civilization,
displacing for lucky Latin and Cyrillic script users the old "semper as ox-house-humper"
names (as Joyce calls them).

> Finally does "modern Latin" have names for modern letters derived from "I"
> and "V"?:

I doubt it. "w" has no real use even in neo-Latin, and as for i/j and u/v,
one can call them vocalic and consonantal "i" or "u" respectively.

--
A: "Spiro conjectures Ex-Lax." John Cowan
Q: "What does Pat Nixon frost her cakes with?" jcowan@...
--"Jeopardy" for generative semanticists http://www.ccil.org/~cowan