G. Sotiroff, Glagolitic Script and Linear B (Research from 1970)

The four characters discussed in the preceding paragraph are all there is, when it comes to direct borrowing from Cyrillic, or from the Greek, with or without wiggles and curlicues. However, there is another case – that of the letter ь – which is very significant in this connection. Each individual letter in the Slavonic alphabets, Cyrillic as well as Glagolitic, has its special name which includes the phonetic value of that particular letter, Thus, az includes the sound ‘a’, buki the sound ‘b’, vedi the sound ‘v’, and so on. The name of the Cyrillic letter ь represents an exception of great importance. This letter (ь) is called ier, yet is does not stand for either ‘i’, ‘e’, or ‘r’. It stands for the sound ‘u’, as in the English word ‘but’. Why, then, was it called ‘ier’? It was, and is, called ier because in Glagolitic it represents the round ‘r’. We have, here, a strong indication that the Glagolitic alphabet is older than the Cyrillic one. It is more than likely that after Saint Cyril had adopted the Greek letter p to denote the sound ‘r’, he noticed the simple and elegant form of the Glagolitic letter ь, which he decided to include in his new (Cyrillic) alphabet with a new, typically Slavonic, phonetic value.

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