Zayin

Zayin (also spelled zain, zayn, or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician zayn 𐤆, Hebrew zayīn ז‎, Aramaic zain 𐡆, Syriac zayn ܙ, and Arabic zāy ز‎. It represents the sound [z].

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z , Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З, as well as Ж. It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪘‎‎, South Arabian 𐩸, and Ge'ez ዘ.

Origin

The early form of this letter might have shown something like a "fetter." Another idea is that it was based on a picture of a copper ingot, which looks like an axeblade. The Phoenician letter was likely named after a sword or another weapon. In Hebrew, the word zayin means "weapon," and there are verbs that mean "to arm" or "to arm oneself."

Arabic zāy

The letter is named zāy. It can look different depending on where it appears in a word.

A special version of zāy called že is used in some languages like Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur. This version has three dots on top instead of just one.

Main article: Že

Hebrew zayin

In modern Hebrew, the letter zayin is used less often than other letters, appearing in about 0.88% of all words. When zayin is followed by a special symbol called a geresh, it makes a different sound, like in the word "vision."

Zayin has an important meaning in a special way of counting called gematria, where letters stand for numbers. In gematria, zayin stands for the number seven. When it appears at the start of a Hebrew year, it shows that the year is in the 7000s.

Zayin is one of seven letters that get a special decoration called a tagin when written in a Torah scroll, a very important book for Jewish people.

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ז	ז	ז

Syriac zain

Zain is a consonant that makes the /z/ sound, which is a voiced sound made with the tongue near the top teeth.

Character encodings

The letter Zayin appears in several ancient writing systems, including Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic. In each of these languages, it makes the "z" sound. These letters are part of a group of symbols called abjads, which are early forms of writing used a long time ago.