The letter U was carved as V because the original Latin alphabet did not have U. V could be a consonant or a vowel, and later on U came about to denote the latt

The letter U was carved as V because the original Latin alphabet did not have U. V could be a consonant or a vowel, and later on U came about to denote the latter. Wikipedia says the first use of U was in 1386. The same thing is true of I and J. J is the consonant version, and iirc came about around the fourth century AD.