The Carolingian G or French G is one of two historical variants of the letter G

G

G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...

which were in use in the Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

; the other variant was the insular G

Insular G

Insular G is a form of the letter g somewhat resembling a tailed z or lowercase delta, used in Britain and Ireland. It was first used by the Irish, passed into Old English, and developed into the Middle English letter yogh...

 or Irish G. The Carolingian G is named for the Carolingian minuscule

Carolingian minuscule

Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It was used in Charlemagne's empire between approximately 800 and 1200...

 script, an examplar of its use.

The Carolingian G stands at the basis of the modern letter G, and eventually replaced the insular G as standard form for the letter. The insular G survived for a while as the letter yogh

Yogh

The letter yogh , was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing y and various velar phonemes. It was derived from the Old English form of the letter g.In Middle English writing, tailed z came to be indistinguishable from yogh....

 before being dropped from the English alphabet

English alphabet

The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...

.

The Carolingian G is the standard letter form for G in all modern alphabets derived from the Latin

Alphabets derived from the Latin

A Latin alphabet is an alphabetical writing system that uses letters of the original Roman Latin alphabet and often various extensions, the Latin script...

.