Mongolian Lha and the Word the Letter Is Named For

The Tibetan word this letter is named for means a god, and it is one of the most productive elements in Tibetan religious vocabulary, appearing in the names of deities, in titles, in terms for temples and images, and in the Tibetan name for the city that is the seat of the tradition. A Mongolian text on Buddhist subjects meets it constantly, and meets it in proper names where an approximation would be unhelpful. Naming a letter after a word is not unusual in itself, since most alphabets name their letters after something, but naming a letter after a word in a different language is a strong statement about what the letter is for.

Mongolian Buddhism took its vocabulary, its curriculum and much of its liturgy from Tibetan sources, and monastic education was conducted with Tibetan texts alongside Mongolian ones. The letters at the end of the alphabet are the residue of that relationship in the writing system itself. They are also a reminder that the traditional Mongolian script has never been only a secular instrument: the largest body of text it has ever carried is religious, and parts of the alphabet exist only because of it. Naming the letter after the word also fixed a convention: the added letters are known by what they are for rather than by any inherited letter name, which is one more way the recited alphabet marks its own seam between what was borrowed and what was built.