The Greek letter was an adaptation of the Phoenician letter bēt ⟨ 𐤁⟩. The Roman ⟨B⟩ derived from the Greek capital beta ⟨ Β⟩ via its Etruscan and Cumaean variants. Late Renaissance or early Baroque design of a B, from 1627 The present forms of the English cursive B were developed by the 17th century.

Following the advent of printing in the 15th century, Holy Roman Empire (Germany) and Scandinavia continued to use forms of blackletter (particularly Fraktur), while England eventually adopted the humanist and antiqua scripts developed in Renaissance Italy from a combination of Roman inscriptions and Carolingian texts. Around 1300, letter case was increasingly distinguished, with upper- and lower-case B taking separate meanings. The Norman Conquest popularised the Carolingian half-uncial forms which latter developed into blackletter ⟨ ⟩. These Old English Latin alphabets supplanted the earlier runes, whose use was fully banned under King Canute in the early 11th century. The uncial ⟨ ⟩ and half-uncial ⟨ ⟩ introduced by the Gregorian and Irish missions gradually developed into the Insular scripts' ⟨ ⟩. Beorc dates to at least the 2nd-century Elder Futhark, which is now thought to have derived from the Old Italic alphabets' ⟨ 𐌁 ⟩ either directly or via Latin ⟨ ⟩. Old English was originally written in runes, whose equivalent letter was beorc ⟨ ᛒ⟩, meaning ' birch'. In some other languages, it is used to represent other bilabial consonants. It represents the voiced bilabial stop in many languages, including English.

Its name in English is bee (pronounced / ˈ b iː/), plural bees.

B, or b, is the second letter of the Latin-script alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide.

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