What's In A Name?

Carl Shank • October 12, 2023

What's In A Name?  Do you remember memorizing your ABCs with the "Alphabet Song" —  "ABCDEFG / HIJKLMNOP / QRSTUV / WXYZ / Now I said my ABCs / What do you think of me?/" Our entire life has been framed by the alphabet. For those of us in the typography or typesetting business, the alphabet is our bread-and-butter. Those of us who design fonts and tweak layouts and redesign business logos are, may I say, in love with the alphabet and all that it conveys. But even if you are only slightly interested in history and the alphabet, have you ever wondered where your name came from? Not your surname, which you can find on sites such as ancestry.com, but your NAME, that which people casually call you. My name is "Carl," and I have wondered where those letters came from in the history of letter forms and cultural associations.

Alphabet History  The Alphabet is old. Very old. John Coleman Darnell, an Egyptologist from Yale University, in the 1990s made a discovery that rocked the alphabetic world. Looking for Egyptian relics, he discovered two ancient inscriptions at Wadi El-hol in central Egypt, about 30 miles northwest of ancient Thebes. This ancient road had evidence of inscriptions on the walls of the cliffs lining the roadway. The writings show the alphabet's invention from around 2000 B.C. A fascinating study of his report is found in David Sacks, Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z.


The Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphics (called "sacred carvings"), using pictograms for letters. Pictures of familiar objects were used to convey sounds and words. The ancient Semites borrowed from these pictograms, so that, for example, the picture of a "head" was called resh, and since the word began with the sound of an "r," they selected that image for the sound. Thus, "R" is the sketch of a head.


From these backgrounds, the Phoenicians, descendants of people who lived in ancient Canaan, began writing their language in a 22-letter alphabet, sometime before 1000 B.C. They had inherited these letters from other tribes before them, but had the skill and knowledge to formally write them down. By 900 B.C. the Jews and other Near Eastern peoples copied the letters for their own use. The Greeks then followed about 800 B.C., adapting the letters for their own use. The chart on the right shows the Phoenician alphabet and how it relates to our modern alphabet.

Beyond the Phoenicians — The Phoenician alphabet begat the Greek which begat the Etruscan, a people who lived in northern Italy. From there, the Roman alphabet and writing were developed. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, while the Greek alphabet had 26. Interestingly, the Hebrews, another Semitic tribe which populated the Canaanite region under the influence of Joshua's campaign (in the Bible), only khet (j), qof (q), resh (r) and shin (v) resemble their Phoenician counterparts. The Hebrew writing from right-to-left derives from the Phoenicians.


Modern letter forms have their immediate heritage in Roman inscriptions from around 50–120 A.D. The digital version called Trajan, created by Carol Twombly in 1989 for Adobe, reveals some of these Latin forms. In the sixth through tenth centuries, lower case letters (called minuscules) were formed, with modern lettering evolving from the Carolingian scripts. The Emperor Charlemagne used these letters as an educational standard. The Charlemagne font, created by Carol Twombly again, can be seen in the Latin lettering in the sample above. Italics then came into being in the form of cursive script developed in Rome and Florence.


Researching My Name — So, with all this information, and more, I investigated the letterforms that make up my name, CARL. The examples below show that tracing. If you would like more information on tracing your own name, buy a copy of  David Sacks, Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z, available at Amazon.com.

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Responding to AI and Digital Babylon

By Carl Shank • April 6, 2026
Responding to AI and Digital Babylon H. Carl Shank April 4, 2026 Austin Gravley, a former Social Media Manager of The Gospel Coalition, and now the Director of Youth Ministry at Redeemer Christian Church in Amarillo, TX, is writing a book on AI and the digital revolution taking place. He compares this Digital Babylon and its captivity and its exiles to Christians living under the overwhelming influence of an active anti-Christian developing AI. Piecing together his comments with those of many others on the advancing scene of AI on our lives, several themes come to mind. First, AI is not God. While there are some in the Silicon Valley who might wish or see AI as a unifying, ontological force that can shape or rule our lives — the Super Machine —others remind us that this is only technology. And as advanced as AI is and becomes, God is still sovereignly in control of it and our lives. Jason Thacker, professor of philosophy and ethics at Southern Seminary and Boyce College, writes — “We must engage these issues, rather than respond after their effects are widely felt. But we don’t have to face today or tomorrow with fear. God is sovereign and his Word is sufficient for every good work, so we are able to walk with confidence as we apply his Word to these challenges with wisdom and guided by his Spirit.” ( The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity , Zondervan, 2020) A recent storm that darkened my community and scuttled Internet services reminded me of that. Even AI data centers, growing to over 3,000 in 2025 nationwide, are not immune to power disruptions and total blackouts. AI pundits may claim to have control procedures to keep the Internet and AI running cannot promise it to be so. We need to keep this in mind in the Digital Babylon age, as was needed to be kept in mind by Israel in the Babylonian Empire age in biblical times. Babylon went through many iterations, but will be defeated by God at the end of the day, as noted in Revelation. Digital Babylon will experience the same demise. This is not prediction, just Bible truth. We as believers need to hold on to such truth. Second, AI is still technology. Indeed, advanced and advancing technology, but not human. Matthew Schultz in a recent mereorthodoxy.com article notes— “Technology has existed since the Garden and is an integral component of our cultural mandate. We should also remember that one of the core distinctions between the Creator and his creatures is that we never create matter but merely (!) rearrange it. This becomes clear whether we consider an ancient farmer in Mesopotamia irrigating a plot of soil, a medieval peasant in Northumbria weaving a basket from flax, or a young musician in London taking the raw outputs of machine sound, adjusting its pitch, volume, and length, and incorporating it into a DAW loop. While there are all sorts of important distinctions and qualifications between pre- and post-industrial craft, there is no metaphysical distance between the two.” ( Artificial Intelligence Is A Technology , Feb. 26, 2026). AI may be the harbinger of a new Industrial Age, but though changes will be major and sometimes severe, the human side of the equation cannot be discounted or counted out. Part of my retired status as a pastor and theologian is that of a typographer restoring old type faces and doing a deep dive into the history of type. Two historical typographical truths stand out. Although the Renaissance age brought movable type from Gutenberg and others into the machine age, the typographical flair of those ancient scribes with pen-drawn exquisite type remained a stylistic standard. The second note is that with the Industrial Age, while affecting the quantity and speed of type development and printing, master type craftsmen rebelled against machine driven type for more organic typefaces. This was seen, for instance, in the type movement spawned by William Morris (1834–1896). William Morris was an Arts & Crafts designer who founded the Kelmscott Press (1891), reviving hand craftsmanship in printing. His work influenced the twentieth century private press and type revival movements. Lettering became a vehicle for breaking convention. Led by figures such as Morris, there was a decided reaction against industrialization, seeing machine-made goods as dehumanizing and ugly. Handcraftmanship, honesty in materials and utility fused with beauty made up much of what was called the Arts & Crafts Movement. That movement was rooted in medieval guild ideals and morality in design. (For an expanded history of type development, see “Advances in Typography: A Historical Sketch — Three Parts” in the blogs by CARE Typography, www.caretypography.com , Nov. 8, 2025, Nov. 18, 2025 and Nov. 20, 2025) Third, AI affects everyone everywhere. Austin Gravely, a former Social Media Manager of The Gospel Coalition, raises and answers the query — “’So what?’, you may think. ‘I’m not an Internet technician. I’m not a fan of AI. I’m not planning to change how I use the Internet. Why does any of this matter to me?’ To put it bluntly: you are naive if you think these disruptions won’t directly affect you, or indirectly affect you through the effect they will have on others. If the iPhone, social media, and AI have taught us anything, it is that you are impacted by these events regardless of whether you participate in them or not.” ( The State of the Internet: 2026 , mereorthodoxy.com, March 30, 2026) He goes on to say — “A changing Internet will change you. It will change you in ways you can see and in ways you can’t. It will change those you live with, work with, play with, build with, and fight with. It will change what is possible, probable, permissible, and prohibited in your life, your vocation, your church, your neighborhood, and any other physical space the Internet touches.” I recall my 99 year old mother who passed away a couple of years ago in a nursing facility. She was one of those survivors of the Great Depression and World War Two who dismissed the first moon landing and had her flat screen TV removed from her room for fear the government was watching. She lasted for nine years in the same private room in a modern nursing center. She was attended by doctors and nurses and staff who used AI on their computers and other care devices. She even had a modern digital phone removed from her room and refused to learn it. While she personally rebelled against her AI driven machine age, she could not escape those who used such technology for her care. We cannot isolate ourselves from AI and its advancing development, no matter how isolated we try to be. Fourth, AI can be either a blessing or a curse. Again, Matthew Schultz notes — “Our task is not to develop a unique theology of AI but to catechize our members into a people who can wield this technology without becoming captive to its internal logic. Like alcohol, artificial intelligence will become a test of character, a dangerous good that divides the foolish from the wise.” He says “Yet the greatest danger is both more pervasive and less obvious: AI is much more likely to be deployed as a multiplicative layer that allows ever more efficient micro-targeting of digital services and physical products by industries that already profit from compulsive behavior. The advent of hyper-personalized, real-time engagement strategies will require legislative safeguards, especially if AI leads to video advertisements generated in real time for an exhaustively mapped individual profile.” We must seek to “humanize” AI and employ it “humanly.” We must resist the phenomenological bent toward unbelief in AI development and pressures. We must once again learn to think critically and pervasively and biblically about AI. Our young people must be taught prescriptive critical thinking practices, rather than unwittingly and ignorantly giving in to what their phones and computers spit out. Church and ministry pastors must pastor rather than let AI bots plan, prepare and even give their sermons. We must learn to smartly negotiate with the “Magnificent Seven”— Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla — rather than blindly following their lead. Convenience and speed must not be allowed to overtake and overcome careful, sustained and critical thinking and acting. “To give language to this change, we must take the best of Christian thinking regarding the social and political imaginary and apply it to the economic imaginary of life under the glowing shores of Digital Babylon, and that kind of work cannot be done with quick hot takes. It will take slow, deep, and thoughtful meditation to apply the riches of Christian thought to making sense of the companies that got us here and where they are taking us.” (Austin Gravley, The State of The Internet: 2026 ) I am both excited and wary of AI. I have learned to be much more cautious about social media and the videos and photos and information they give. Much of it has been and is being AI produced and tweaked. Spammers use AI technology to wrest thousands of dollars from unsuspecting senior citizens. Schools are requiring students to turn off their cell phones or “bag” them until after school hours because of the insidious nature of AI generated stuff. I value more and more of a face-to-face approach in teaching and learning and mentoring others. And we must adopt a state of “believing is seeing” rather than a non-Christian scientifically sanctioned “seeing is believing” approach to truth and justice.

Type Details Matter: Typos & Fractions

By Carl Shank • March 31, 2026
Type Details Matter: Typos & Fractions Carl Shank March 31, 2026 “The practice of typography, if it be followed faithfully, is hard work — full of detail, full of petty restrictions, full of drudgery, and not greatly rewarded as men now count rewards. There are times when we need to bring to it all the history and art and feeling that we can, to make it bearable. But in the light of history, and of art, and of knowledge and of man’s achievement, it is as interesting a work that exists—a broad and humanizing employment which indeed can be followed merely as a trade, but which if perfected into an art or even broadened into a profession, will perpetually open new horizons to our eyes and new opportunities to our hands.” (“Thoughts Upon A Typographic Custom,” Alexander S. Lawson, Electronic Publishing , January 28, 1994) Such detail and “petty restrictions” are to be found in the consideration and history of typographic errors (typos) and the use of fractions. In my March 23, 2023 blog I noted that we need more than a spellchecker. Spell checkers are great. They help us in busy offices doing busy tasks everyday. EXCEPT they cannot correct errors of statement or errors of typography. Grant Weisbrot of New York City has noted that "it is impossible to efficiently proofread without a knowledge of typesetting and printing procedures." ("The Typographic Eye: Proofreading," Electronic Publishing , May 13, 1994) Thus, the note to “raise the register mark and close up the space” in an article is translated by the typographer to “kern the register mark five units and raise it 1¼ points.”  He gives some examples of errors of statements — spelling when letters are missing, like "he" for "the;" spelling in a piece published in Britain, like "color" for "colour;" using a correctly spelled word in a wrong way, like 20 carat gold (carat is a diamond weight, karat is an alloy of gold, caret is an insertion mark, and carrot is a vegetable); awkward sentence structure, incorrect or inconsistent capitalization, ungrammatical or awkward sentence structure, failure to apply indents or hangs when suitable, and errors of fact, like the kangaroos of Tibet.
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