The use of ' c' (and its variant ' g') replaced most usages of ' k' and ' q'. During the 3rd century BC, a modified character was introduced for /ɡ/, and ' c' itself was retained for /k/. Of these, ' q' was used to represent /k/ or /ɡ/ before a rounded vowel, ' k' before ' a', and ' c' elsewhere. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters ' c k q' were used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). In Latin it eventually took the ' c' form in Classical Latin. Already in the Western Greek alphabet, Gamma first took a ' ' form in Early Etruscan, then ' ' in Classical Etruscan. In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing, so the Greek ' Γ' (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent /k/. Powell, a specialist in the history of writing, states 'It is hard to imagine how gimel = 'camel' can be derived from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)'. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel.

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