Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet was a writing system developed in Bulgaria during the 10th century A.D. for the writing of Old Church Slavonic. With Christianity having been made the official state religion in 864, king Boris I commissioned the creation of the alphabet. Climent of Ochrid developed the alphabet and named it for his teacher, St. Cyril, a missionary who, along with his brother, Methodius, is credited with inventing the Glagolitic alphabet, an earlier Slavic alphabet and an influence on this one. In the following centuries, the Early Cyrillic was replaced by a later form, the Modern Cyrillic alphabet, which is still widely in use throughout Asia and Eastern Europe.
This chart displays the most common letters of the Early Cyrillic, and, for each, its most common name in Old Church Slavonic, common Roman alphabet transliterations, and common International Phonetic Alphabet descriptions.
