Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

According to Mark, Oscar's swimming instructor asked him last night how he spelled his name.

Oscar, who is five, replied, "Aah - ess - cee - ay - are."

This is a side effect of my decision, made a few years ago, not to teach him  the alphabet, or indeed the names of any letters, until after he had already made the connection between spelling and phonetics.   

A lot of kids get confused by the fact that "B" is called "bee" but represents the sound /b/.  It's pretty common for kids to see, e.g., "bat" and try to "sound it out" as "bee-a-t" or "bee-a-tee" before they learn to correct themselves.  Because of this, most phonics curricula emphasize working with kids to disentangle "name of letter" from "sound of letter" (and "sound of letter," itself, is problematic, but I won't go into that here...) 

For example, I just picked up an inexpensive "complete phonics curriculum" from a Catholic publisher (mainly to get the early readers that come with it --- the curriculum and teaching methods itself are rife with the problems that are common to most over-the-counter reading instruction).  Here's an excerpt:

Say, "This is the letter A.  Its name is A, but it says aaaaaaa, as in aaaaaaapple".....

"This is the letter B.  Its name is B, but it says buh [permission is granted to cringe regarding the use of "buh" instead of /b/ - ed.], as in buh-buh-Bible.  Buh-Bible begins with B." 

If you ignore letter names, you don't have to perform this particular bit of educational acrobatics.  You can show the child a "b" and say, "This letter represents the sound /b/."  Much, much later, you can teach the names of the letters.

But children are supposed to learn the names of the letters, and the alphabet song, and all that, BEFORE they learn to read! 

Why?  What on earth is the point? As far as I can tell, the only reason we typically teach the alphabet first is because someone says we should.  What use are the names of the letters, or the memorized order of the alphabet?   All I can think of are:

1. Spelling out loud
2. Looking up words or phrases in an alphabetized list, such as a dictionary or certain bookshelves
3. Reference to enumerated lists that use alphabetic enumerators
4. Reading abbreviations, i.e., i.e.
5. Decoding the (admittedly clever) book C D B! by William Steig

None of these activities necessarily precede reading.   I have to conclude that knowing the alphabet, singing the Alphabet Song, and knowing the names of letters are regarded as necessary pre-reading skills for no other reason than we've always done it that way.  (I am not the first to make this observation, of course, although I came to it independently in time to avoid teaching Oscar the alphabet a few years ago.)

Anyway, I have taught him the alphabet since then, but sometimes when he's spelling he forgets and calls a letter by its sound instead of its name.  I'm not worried; his reading is going very well, and he will get the letter names eventually.   I'm planning to use a special mnemonic chant, or song, to teach the names of the letters.  Maybe you've heard of it.