Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>How was each letter of the alphabet called in Latin?
>
I recall reading that the continuants were generally named just by their
sound: [fff] [lll] [mmm] etc. and the e- prefix came about by
epenthesis, while the stops had an -e extension to make them
pronounceable. H's name got messed up because [h] was dropping out of
the language and they couldn't pronounce it well anymore. They tried
using words that could get them to approximate the sound as best they
could: [aha] [axa]... eventually you get [akka], which became "aitch" in
the same way that "vacca" became French "vache."

~mark