J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added. Its name in English is jay (pronounced /dʒeɪ/). It was formerly jy (from French ji), and in some dialects, mainly of Scottish English, it still is (pronounced /dʒaɪ/).

J was originally an alternative version of I. Its minuscule, j, was used in the Middle Ages as a swash character to end some Roman numerals in place of i. There was an emerging distinctive use in Middle High German.Petrus Ramus (d. 1572) was the first to explicitly distinguish I and J as representing separate sounds. Originally, both I and J represented /i/, /iː/, and /j/; but Romance languages developed new sounds (from former /j/ and /g/) that came to be represented as I and J; therefore, English J (from French J) has a sound value quite different from /j/.

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