Zayin

← Waw Zayin Heth →
Phoenician
Hebrew	ז
Aramaic
Syriac	ܙ
Arabic	ز
Phonemic representation	z
Position in alphabet	7
Numerical value	7
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek	Ζ
Latin	Z
Cyrillic	З

Zayin (also spelled zain or 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

Origin

The Proto-Sinaitic glyph may have been called ziqq, may not have been based on a hieroglyph, and may have depicted a "fetter".^[1]

An alternative view is that it is based on the "copper ingot" hieroglyph (𓈔) in the form of an axeblade, after noting that the name "zayin" has roots in Aramaic to refer to "Arms," "Armor," and "Metal used for arms."^[2]

The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Hebrew, zayin (זין‎) means "weapon", the verb lĕzayyēn (לזיין‎) means "to arm", and the verb lĕhizdayyēn (להזדיין‎) means "to arm oneself".

Arabic zāy

The letter is named zāy. It has two forms, depending on its position in the word:

The similarity to rāʼ  ر  is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred to jīm and ḥāʼ.

The same letter has another name – že (Persian pronunciation: [ʒe]) – in a number of languages, such as Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur (see K̡ona Yezik̡).

Hebrew zayin

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

In modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of zayin, out of all the letters, is 0.88%.

Hebrew spelling: זַיִן

In modern Hebrew, the combination ז׳‎ (zayin followed by a geresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote [ʒ] as in vision.

Significance

Numerical value (gematria)

In gematria, zayin represents the number seven,^[3] and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years it means 7000 (i.e. זתשנד in numbers would be the future date 7754).

Use in Torah scroll

Zayin, in addition to ʻayin, gimel, teth, nun, shin, and tzadi, is one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll).

Syriac zain

Zain is a consonant with the /z/ sound which is a voiced alveolar fricative.

Character encodings

See also

• ڤ - Ve
• پ - Pe
• گ - Gāf
• چ - Che

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Zayin (letter).

This page was last edited on 8 May 2024, at 16:39