Why are a few letters named nothing related to how it is pronounced?

Question

Why are the names of these letters so different from how they are actually used in words ?

1. F - there are no words that start with an "F" that use the pronunciation "ɛf".
2. L - there are no words that start with an "L" that use the pronunciation " ɛl"

Similarly, M (ɛm), N (ɛn), H (etʃ), R (ɑr), S (ɛs), W (dəbəlju), x (ɛks), Y (waj) and Z (zɛd).

Apart from Z, which can be pronounced as 'zi', why are the names so different from how it is pronounced in words ?

Examples for other alphabets with words that have the same (almost) pronunciation as its name :

Ace, Beware, Cease, Deep, Eagle, Genes, Ice, Jail, Keratin, Oath, Piece, Queue, Tea, Unisex, Veal, X-ray.

Answer 1

The names of most consonants in English contain a common sound of the consonant, plus enough of a vowel sound that the name is a syllable. In some consonant names, the vowel sound precedes the consonant sound. In other consonant names, the vowel sound follows the consonant sound. There are three exceptions. "H"'s name has drifted away from its pronunciation. The names of "W" and "Y" match how they are written.

Consonant sounds at the start of the consonant name:
. B C D G J K P Q T V Z

Consonant sounds at the end of the consonant name:
. F L M N R S X

Vowels:
. A E I O U

There are only three exceptions:
. H W Y

• H: Spanish pronounces its "j" as "hota", so it would be possible to pronounce "H" using its consonant sound + a vowel sound. According to https://infogalactic.com/info/H, the name has mutated over time. In Latin, "k" and "h" used to have similar sounds. The name of "H" picked up the "k" sound. The "k" sound in the name of "H" then mutated to be a "ch" sound in Old French. Various English speakers use a similar variety of pronunciations when pronouncing the "c" in the Latin word pace.
• W: This letter is named for how it is written -- as a doubled "U" or "V".
• Y: This letter is also named for how it is written -- as a combination of "V" and "I". According to https://infogalactic.com/info/Y, the Romans borrowed the letter "Upsilon" from Greek twice -- once as the letter "v", and once as a "Greek i".

Answer 2

The names of the letters are just names, they don't pretend to represent the sound that the letters make. Just as the first letter of the Greek alphabet has the name alpha, the sixth letter of the Latin alphabet is named "ef" in English.

The names of the vowels do match up with a possible pronunciation of the vowel. But the consonants don't. Your example for "B" is wrong, as the B in beware isn't pronounced "bee", it needs to be followed by a vowel. The name of the letter usually contains the sound that the letter normally makes, but there is no rule for naming letters, it is just historical accent that "B" is "bee" but "F" is "eff"

X-ray is an exception. The letter X is being used for its name. That could be done with any letter. Maths students are sometimes taught that corresponding angles are "F-angles". Parkinsons disease is treated with L-dopa. There are examples that can be given for any letter.

Answer 3

This answer might complement the previous ones.

Names of letters should be taught with less strenght than sounds, we may say. Which is important is to know how a sound correspond with a particular symbol, and the inverse in order for the language to be complete.

In any alphabet we write some symbols:

a, b, c, d, e, f, g...

and assign each symbol a sound.

But in our alphabetic system we can't pronounce consonants, so in order to speak about them we combine it with a vowel, and this gives birth to 'names'. We can define a name as: consonant (sound) + vowel (sound).

(I think this answers part of the question)

Example

So although c has a sound (and really this is not an unique sound), we name it differently to speak about it, and we say c(name)= c(sound) + e(sound).

Curiosity

There is a strange case. When we speak about Greek alphabet even vowels have names, but this, I believe, is a different story.

So when we want to speak about letters we use names, but they aren't completely related to the sound, as was pointed out.