The Urdu alphabet is derived from the Persian (Farsi) and the Arabic alphabet, where majority of the letters are borrowed from Arabic while only four alphabets are primarily borrowed from Persian. Very seldom, letters may be borrowed from Sanskrit. Even though the letters actually are inherited from these languages, the names used for these letters differ in some cases, for instance, letters ‘bay’ and ‘tay’ in Urdu are called only ‘baa’ and ‘taa’ in Arabic.

In Urdu, composition of alphabets based on three formations, former or pre (ترکیبِ سابق) , after (ترکیبِ لاحق) and parallel (ترکیبِ طرفین). For example, in با, the formation of Aliph (ا) with Bay (ب) is pre formation (ترکیبِ سابق) .

Below is a table of all the Urdu letters along with their names and the phonetic pronunciation of their names. It is also specified as to which language the letter is borrowed from and the respective keys to press on a keyboard. For the purposes of following the text in this book, Latin alternatives are provided with the alphabet.