Why Z Is The Final Letter

You might assume Z has always been the end, but the ancient Romans actually removed it from the alphabet for a time. It was eventually added back only to help scholars write Greek loanwords.

The letter Z was originally part of the early Latin alphabet but was deleted because it was rarely used in native Latin words. By the first century BC, it was reintroduced to properly represent the sounds in Greek words. This strange history is why it sits at the very end of our alphabet today. It remains a rare guest in the English language compared to its common neighbors.