Koppa

Koppa, also known as Qoppa, was a special letter used in the very first forms of the Greek alphabet. It came from an old letter called Phoenician qoph, which looked like the symbol 𐤒. At first, Koppa made the "k" sound, but later it was replaced by another letter called kappa (Κ).

Even though Koppa is no longer used in regular writing, it still has an important job. In the special way Greeks count numbers, Koppa stands for the number 90. It looks a little different when used this way. Because of Koppa, we have the letter Latin Q in our alphabet today. It also helped create a number sign used in [Cyrillic] writing, called koppa.

Alphabetic

The koppa was a special letter used in early Greek writing. It came from a Phoenician letter called qoph. In Greek, it was used to make the "k" sound before certain vowels. Over time, it was replaced by another letter called kappa.

The koppa was also an important symbol for the city of Corinth, which was once spelled with this letter.

Numeric

Koppa stayed in use as a number sign in the Milesian system of Greek numerals, where it stood for the number 90. Even today, people still use it for this purpose, although its shape has changed over time. In some handwriting styles, the letter looks like a zigzag line. This shape was also used in other writing systems, like the early Cyrillic and Gothic alphabets, where it also meant the number 90.

Typography

Modern designs for the numeral koppa often use a Z-shaped character. It can look like a simple lightning bolt, or have the top part curved to the right. Some shapes look like the Hebrew letter lamedh, either as it is or turned upside down. Older prints may show koppa in shapes based on its original form. Sometimes, koppa can look the same as another Greek numeral called stigma depending on the font.

Just like with other Greek numerals such as stigma and sampi, modern printing usually does not change the shape between uppercase and lowercase for koppa when it is used as a number.

Unicode

The Unicode system includes special symbols for the old Greek letter koppa. It started with just one symbol for koppa in 1993, and later added more symbols in 1999 and 2002 to better represent its different shapes. Because of this, not all fonts show these symbols the same way. Some newer fonts use one symbol for the lowercase version, while older fonts might show a different shape or no symbol at all. Font designers have created new versions to try to standardize how koppa looks, but there are still many different ways it can appear.