The Greek alphabet has been in continuous use for the past 2750 years more or less - since about 750 BC. It was developed from the Canaanite/Phoenician alphabet and the order and names of the letters are derived from Phoenician. The original Canaanite meanings of the letter names was lost when the alphabet was adapted for Greek.

At first, there were a number of different versions of the alphabet used in various different Greek cities. These local alphabets, known as epichoric, can be divided into three groups: green, blue, and red. The red group developed into the Etruscan alphabet, other alphabets of ancient Italy and eventually the Latin alphabet. The blue group developed into the modern Greek alphabet.

By the early 4th century BC, the epichoric alphabets were replaced by the eastern Ionic alphabet. The capital letters of the modern Greek alphabet are almost identical to those of the Ionic alphabet. The lower case letters first appeared sometime after 800 AD and developed from the Byzantine miniscule script, which developed from cursive writing.