What is the origin of the Cyrillic alphabet?
The Cyrillic alphabet is named after St. Cyril, a missionary from Byzantium. It was invented sometime during the 10th century AD, possibly by St. Kliment of Ohrid, to write the Old Church Slavonic language. The Cyrillic alphabet achieved its current form in 1708 during the reign of Peter the Great. Four letters were eliminated from the alphabet in a 1917/18 reform. The Cyrillic alphabet has been adapted to write over 50 different languages, mainly in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. In many cases additional letters are used, some of which are adaptations of standard Cyrillic letters, while others are taken from the Greek or Latin alphabets.
Actually, what St.Ciril created was called a “glagolic” alphabet which is quite different in appearance than the “cyrillic” alphabet. St. Cyril created the Glagolic alphabet in preparation, together with his brother Methodius, to their mission in Moravia. After Moravia fell to Latin influence the brothers’ disciples fled to Bulgaria as this country was adopting Christianity (officially in 885 AD). There, one of them, St. Kliment of Ohrid came up with a modified alphabet which was called “Cyrillic” in honor of their teacher St. Cyril. The Cyrilic alphabet became the official alphabet for the Bulgarian language and still is to the present day. Later on it spread out of Bulgaria, mainly by distribution of church books to other Slavic countries like Serbia, Russia etc.
