THE LETTER "J" When was the letter "J" added to the alphabet? For example, on some early New England tombstones, John was spelled Lohn. In ancient times "i" was used for both a vowel and a consonant sound. Later a hook was added to the "i" as a decoration especially when "i" was more likely to have a consonant sound in this position, the hooked "i" came to be associated with the "j" sound. Not until the beginning of the 19th century did the "new" letter merit its own assigned place as the tenth letter of the alphabet in dictionaries. Noah Webster, in his 1806 dictionary, was one of the first to implement this separation of "i" and "j" (Ritland Herald. 7 Jan 1996 by Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Ed.)