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started up as the Greek letter zeta and the Phoenician letter zayin, both of which were placed at the beginning of the alphabet.
These early letters resembled modern uppercase Is with broad top & bottom strokes. Though the Romans borrowed
 Z from the Greeks it quickly fell out of use in favor of the S sound. Z was not fully adopted into the Roman alphabet until the 1st century AD when the Romans began having more contact with the Greeks. In modern British English Z is known as Zed, which comes from the Greek, wheras the American "zee" follows the general Roman usage. As it became a minscule z acquired two forms: one with a descending tail and one without. Modern Z is classified as the “blade- open- voice- consonant.”
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