Zeta

UK: /ˈziːtə/, US: /ˈzeɪtə/ is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. It looks like a capital Ζ and a small ζ. In old times, people said it as zē̂ta or zdɛ̌ːta, but today in Modern Greek, it is said as zíta (ˈzita).

In a special counting system called Greek numerals, zeta stands for the number 7. It came from an old letter called zayin used by the Phoenician people, whose symbol was 𐤆. Over time, zeta helped create other letters, like the Roman Z (Z) and the Cyrillic З (З).

Name

Unlike other Greek letters, zeta was given a new name, similar to beta, eta, and theta. The word "zeta" is the origin of "zed," the name for the Latin letter Z in Commonwealth English. In Swedish and many Romance languages like Italian and Spanish, "zeta" refers to both the Greek letter ζ and the Roman letter Z.

Main articles: Greek letters, Phoenician, beta, theta

Further information: Z, Swedish, Romance languages, Italian, Spanish

Uses

The Greek alphabet on a black figure vessel, with the Phoenician I shape of the zeta

The letter ζ stands for a special sound in Modern Greek. Scholars are not sure exactly how it was said in ancient Greek before the year 400 BC. Some think it sounded like "zd," and others think it sounded like "dz."

Zeta means the number 7 in the Greek numeral system. In mathematics and science, the small zeta letter is used for many ideas, like the Riemann zeta function and the damping ratio.

Unicode

The Greek letter Zeta has several ways to show up in Unicode. Unicode is a system that helps computers use and show text from many languages. For Zeta, there is a big letter (Ζ) and a small letter (ζ). We use these in everyday Greek writing. There are also special shapes for math and other writing systems, like Coptic and Old Permic, each with its own special code.