When you are learning American Sign Language, also known as ASL, one of the first things that you have to work with is the ASL alphabet. The modern alphabet used by ASL is derived from a Spanish manual alphabet that dates back more than a hundred years. The alphabet employed in ASL ia a system where each letter has a corresponding hand position. This is meant to augment ASL and the fact that some words do not have signs. In some cases, as with names, signs are derived from a manual alphabet. In this case, it can be seen that the letters of the alphabet can help form independent words, marking ASL as a continually evolving language.