Bet (letter)
2nd letter of many Semitic abjads
Bet, Beth, Vet, or Ba is the second letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician bēt 𐤁, Hebrew bēṯ ב, Aramaic bēṯ 𐡁, Syriac bēṯ ܒ and Arabic bāʾ ب. It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪈, South Arabian 𐩨, and Ge'ez በ. Its sound value is the voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or the voiced labiodental fricative ⟨v⟩.
The letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic bayt, Akkadian bītu, bētu, Hebrew: bayīṯ, Phoenician bēt etc.; ultimately all from Proto-Semitic *bayt), and appears to derive from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a house by acrophony.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the Greek beta (Β, β), Latin B (B, b) and Cyrillic Be (Б, б) and Ve (В, в), and also the Armenian letter Ben (Բ, բ).
Origin
The name bet is derived from the West Semitic word for "house" (as in Hebrew: בַּיִת, romanized: bayiṯ), and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on the Egyptian hieroglyph Pr, which depicts a house.
Arabic bāʾ
The Arabic letter ب is named بَاءْ bāʾ (bāʔ). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word
The letter normally renders /b/ sound, except in some names and loanwords where it can also render /p/, often Arabized as /b/, as in بَرْسِيلْ (Persil). For /p/, it may be used interchangeably with the Persian letter پ - pe (with 3 dots) in this case.
Interpretation of ب
Bāʾ is the first letter of the Quran [ 1:1], the first letter of Basmala.
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