# M

**M** (lowercase m) is the thirteenth letter of the [English alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/english-alphabet) and a consonant representing the sound /m/, a bilabial nasal.<sup>[1](https://www.etymonline.com/word/M)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[2](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/m)</sup> It descends through the Greek letter mu from the Semitic letter mem, and it also serves as the Roman numeral for 1,000.<sup>[1](https://www.etymonline.com/word/M)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://files.znu.edu.ua/files/Bibliobooks/Kushynova/0034639.pdf)</sup>

| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Alphabet position | Thirteenth letter of the English alphabet; thirteenth of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets, twelfth of the Latin<sup>[1](https://www.etymonline.com/word/M)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[4](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)</sup> |
| Name and origin | Phoenician name mem ("water"); Greek name mu (μῦ), formed on the analogy of the name for n<sup>[4](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://files.znu.edu.ua/files/Bibliobooks/Kushynova/0034639.pdf)</sup> |
| Roman numeral | M stands for 1,000 (Latin *mille*); the symbol was at first the Greek letter phi, which became CI, then M<sup>[3](https://files.znu.edu.ua/files/Bibliobooks/Kushynova/0034639.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[5](https://cool.culturalheritage.org/don/dt/dt2896.html)</sup> |
| Unicode encoding | U+004D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M, decimal 77, UTF-8 0x4D, in the Basic Latin block; lowercase m is U+006D<sup>[6](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B004d)</sup> |
| Sound | /m/, a voiced bilabial nasal, as in *my*, *summer*, or *him*<sup>[2](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/m)</sup> |
| Related symbol | U+2133 SCRIPT CAPITAL M (ℳ) is unified with the pre-1949 symbol for the German currency unit Mark<sup>[7](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode16.0.0/core-spec/chapter-22/)</sup> |

## History of the letter

M was the thirteenth letter of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets and the twelfth of the [Latin alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-alphabet), which lacked a distinct J in the classical period.<sup>[4](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[8](https://atlas.perseus.tufts.edu/dictionaries/entry/urn%3Acite2%3Ascaife-viewer%3Adictionary-entries.atlas_v1%3Alat.ls.perseus-eng2-n27421/)</sup> The Phoenician name of the symbol was mem, and the Greek name μῦ was formed on the analogy of the name for the letter n.<sup>[4](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)</sup> The English letter name M was borrowed from Latin around 1200 AD.<sup>[1](https://www.etymonline.com/word/M)</sup>

**Early letterforms.** In the earliest representations, written from right to left, the greater length of the first limb of m is characteristic. In early Greek alphabets, a four-stroke M with legs of equal length represented the sound s, not m, while five-stroke forms were confined practically to Crete, Melos, and Cumae; from the last of these the Romans received the letter along with the rest of their alphabet.<sup>[4](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)</sup> The Phoenician mem looked much like the modern two-bumped lowercase m with an added tail, and the Etruscans and then the Romans adopted the Greek form without substantial changes to its shape or proportions.<sup>[9](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-m)</sup>

**Abbreviation and numeral uses.** Writing the five-stroke form from left to right is thought to have produced the Latin abbreviation M' for the praenomen Manius, with the apostrophe standing for the letter's original fifth stroke.<sup>[4](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)</sup> The Romans pressed M, together with I, X, V, L, C, and D, into service as numerals, giving M the value 1,000.<sup>[9](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-m)</sup> One account of the numeral's shape holds that 1,000 was at first represented by the Greek letter phi, which in lettering and architectural inscriptions became CI and then M.<sup>[5](https://cool.culturalheritage.org/don/dt/dt2896.html)</sup>

**Medieval shorthand.** During the medieval period, scribes often marked the letter before with a stroke rather than writing out an m, most likely because m was among the slower letters to form.<sup>[9](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-m)</sup>

## Sound and pronunciation

The letter represents the nasal consonant /m/ in English and in the Latin alphabet generally. In classical Latin pronunciation, a word-final m was not fully pronounced but merely indicated a nasal pronunciation of the preceding vowel, as in French *an*, *en*, *on*.<sup>[10](https://intranet.royalholloway.ac.uk/classics/documents/pdf/2017-vvv-2016.pdf)</sup> In French, when m follows a, e, i, o, u, or y, it often forms a nasal vowel with that letter and is itself silent, as in *champ*, *faim*, and *ombre*; it is pronounced in certain words of Latin or foreign origin such as *album* and *Stockholm*.<sup>[11](https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A8M0001)</sup>

## Encoding in Unicode

In the Unicode Standard, capital M is U+004D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M, encoded in the Basic Latin block (also known as ASCII) with decimal value 77 and UTF-8 byte 0x4D; its lowercase counterpart m is U+006D.<sup>[6](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B004d)</sup> The character is classified as an uppercase letter, is case-mapped to m, and has the script property Latin.<sup>[6](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B004d)</sup>

Several letterlike and mathematical variants exist as separate characters. U+2133 SCRIPT CAPITAL M (ℳ) was deliberately unified with the pre-1949 symbol for the German currency unit Mark, a choice that restricts the range of glyphs usable for the character in the code charts.<sup>[7](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode16.0.0/core-spec/chapter-22/)</sup> The Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block adds styled forms such as U+1D4DC MATHEMATICAL BOLD SCRIPT CAPITAL M and U+1D5E0 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL M, each carrying a compatibility decomposition to the base letter M.<sup>[12](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1d400/)</sup> Diacritic combinations are encoded separately, for example U+1E3E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH ACUTE and U+1E42 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH DOT BELOW, the latter used in Indic transliteration.<sup>[13](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1e00/)</sup>

## Other uses

Beyond its alphabetic and numeral roles, M appears in specialized notations. In music, "m." refers to a single measure and "mm." to a number of bars.<sup>[14](https://www.potsdam.edu/academics/crane-school-music/departments-programs/music-theory-history-composition/abbreviations)</sup> In Cyrillic usage, M is the universally recognized glyph, and the letter appears in the Cyrillic alphabet as М.<sup>[15](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=369853644a909261d2a684c88360feada50eb733&repid=rep1&type=pdf)</sup>

## References

1. [M - Etymology, Origin & Meaning, Etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/M)
2. [M Definition & Meaning, Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/m)
3. [M in the Phoenician alphabet (textbook excerpt)](https://files.znu.edu.ua/files/Bibliobooks/Kushynova/0034639.pdf)
4. [1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/M, Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/M)
5. [Etherington & Roberts Dictionary: Roman numerals](https://cool.culturalheritage.org/don/dt/dt2896.html)
6. [U+004D "M" Latin Capital Letter M Unicode Character](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B004d)
7. [Chapter 22, The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode16.0.0/core-spec/chapter-22/)
8. [M, Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, Scaife ATLAS](https://atlas.perseus.tufts.edu/dictionaries/entry/urn%3Acite2%3Ascaife-viewer%3Adictionary-entries.atlas_v1%3Alat.ls.perseus-eng2-n27421/)
9. [The Letter M, Fonts.com](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-m)
10. [In classical Latin pronunciation, the letter m, Royal Holloway](https://intranet.royalholloway.ac.uk/classics/documents/pdf/2017-vvv-2016.pdf)
11. [m, Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 8e édition](https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A8M0001)
12. [Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, Unicode 18.0.0 names list](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1d400/)
13. [Latin Extended Additional, Unicode 18.0.0 names list](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1e00/)
14. [Abbreviations, SUNY Potsdam](https://www.potsdam.edu/academics/crane-school-music/departments-programs/music-theory-history-composition/abbreviations)
15. [The Unicode Standard, Version 6.2 (CiteSeerX copy)](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=369853644a909261d2a684c88360feada50eb733&repid=rep1&type=pdf)

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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Languages and linguistics › Writing and notation systems › Latin script*

*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*

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