Z - Wikipedia [Link]

title=Z

, or , is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the Latin alphabet. It is used in the modern English
alphabet, in the alphabets of other Western European languages, and in others worldwide. Its
usual names in English are (/ˈzɛd/), which is most commonly used in British English, and
(/ˈziː/ ⓘ), [1]
most commonly used in American English, with an occasional archaic variant
(/ˈɪzərd/).[2]

Name

The z is sometimes used as a

memorization aid in English education.

In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand,
South Africa and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from
the Greek letter (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American
English its name is /ziː/, analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a late
17th-century English dialectal form.[3]

Another English dialectal form is /ˈɪzərd/. This dates from the mid-18th century and
probably derives from Occitan or the French , whose reconstructed Latin form would
be ,[2] perhaps a Vulgar Latin form with a prosthetic vowel. Outside of the anglosphere, its
variants are still used in Hong Kong English and Cantonese.[4]

Other languages spell the letter's name in a similar way: in Italian, Basque, and Spanish,
in Icelandic (no longer part of its alphabet but found in personal names), in Portuguese, in
Swedish, in Danish, in Dutch, Indonesian, Polish, Romanian, and Czech, in German
(capitalized as a noun), in Norwegian, in French, (ゼット) in Japanese, and in

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Vietnamese (not part of its alphabet). Several

languages render it as /ts/ or /dz/, e.g.

Zz
/ˈtsetɑ/ or more rarely /tset/ in Finnish
(sometimes dropping the first altogether;
/ˈsetɑ/, or /set/ the latter of which is not very
commonplace). In Standard Chinese pinyin,
the name of the letter Z is pronounced [tsɨ], as
in "zi", although the English and have
become very common. In Esperanto the name
of the letter Z is pronounced /zo/.

History

Latin script

Alphabetic and
logographic

Latin language

[z] [d͡z] [t͡s]

͡ ]
[dʒ [ð] [θ]
The Semitic symbol was the seventh letter,
[s] [ʃ] [j]
named , which meant "weapon" or
/zɛd/ /ziː/
"sword". It represented either the sound /z/ as
in English and French, or possibly more like U+005A, U+007A
/dz/ (as in Italian , ).
26

The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the

Phoenician Zayin ( ), and the Greek
inscriptional form remained in this shape
throughout ancient times. The Greeks called it
, a new name made in imitation of (η) •
and (θ). ◦

In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest ▪

▪

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▪
▪ Ζζ
▪𐌆
▪

c. 700 BCE to present

Ʒ Ç Ƶ
Ž Ż 𐌶
ℤ Ꮓ

З Ѕ Ԑ
Ԇ Ҙ ꙅ
Ӡ ‫זزܙ‬ ‫ژ‬
ࠆ ዘ 𐎇
Զզ Ꮓ Ꮛ
Ꮸ ડ ઢ
ज़
Disputed: ㄷ

z(x), cz, dž, dz, sz,

dzs, tzsch

Left-to-right

Greece, the letter seems to have represented /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it
seems to have stood for /zd/ and /dz/ – there is no consensus concerning this issue.[5] In other
dialects, such as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling
the English voiced and voiceless (IPA /ð/ and /θ/, respectively). In the common dialect (koine)
that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became /z/, as it remains in modern Greek.

The Etruscan letter was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, most probably through the
Greek alphabet used on the island of Ischia. In Etruscan, this letter may have represented /ts/.

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The letter existed in more archaic versions of Latin, but at c. 300 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus,
the Roman censor, removed the letter Z from the alphabet, because the appearance while
pronouncing it imitated a grinning skull.[6] A more likely explanation is that the /z/ sound that it
probably represented had disappeared from Latin after turning into /r/ due to a rhotacism
process,[7] making the letter useless for spelling Latin words.[8] Whatever the case may be,
Appius Claudius's distaste for the letter Z is today credited as the reason for its removal. A few
centuries later, after the Roman Conquest of Greece, Z was again borrowed to spell words from
the prestigious Attic dialect of Greek.

Before the reintroduction of , the sound of zeta was written at the beginning of words and in
the middle of words, as in for ζώνη "belt" and for τραπεζίτης "banker".

In some inscriptions, represented a Vulgar Latin sound, likely an affricate, formed by the
merging of the reflexes of Classical Latin /j/, /dj/ and /gj/: for example, for
"January", for "deacon", and for "today".[9] Likewise, /di/ sometimes
replaced /z/ in words like for "to baptize". In modern Italian, represents /ts/
or /dz/, whereas the reflexes of and are written with the letter (representing
/dʒ/ when before and ): , . In other languages, such as Spanish, further evolution of
the sound occurred.

Old English used alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced sibilant. The Latin sound imported
through French was new and was not written with but with or . The successive changes can
be seen in the doublet forms and . Both of these come from a late Latin ,
derived from the imported Greek ζῆλος . The earlier form is ; its initial sound is the
[dʒ], which developed to Modern French [ʒ]. John Wycliffe wrote the word as or .

at the end of a word was pronounced , as in English , from Old French "enough"
(Modern French ), from Vulgar Latin ("to sufficiency").[10]

In earlier times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with but with or related

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typographic symbols.[11][12]

Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for the
Icelandic, Finnish and Swedish alphabets is Ö, while it is Å for Danish and Norwegian. The
German alphabet ends with , as the umlauts ( , , and ) and the letter ( or
) are regarded respectively as modifications of the vowels and as a
(standardized) variant spelling of , not as independent letters, so they come after the
unmodified letters in the alphabetical order.

The variant with a stroke ⟨Ƶƶ⟩ and the lower-case tailed Z ⟨ʒ⟩, though distinct characters, can also
be considered to be allographs of ⟨Z⟩/⟨z⟩.

Tailed Z (German , also ) originated in the medieval Gothic

minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter typefaces. In some Antiqua typefaces, this letter is
present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Ligated with long s (ſ), it is part of the origin of the
Eszett (ß) in the German alphabet. The character came to be indistinguishable from the yogh (ȝ)
in Middle English writing, leading to the apparently anomalous pronunciation of the surname
.

Unicode assigns codepoints U+2128 ℨ BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL Z (ℨ, ℨ) and

U+1D537 𝔷 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR SMALL Z (𝔷) in the Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical
alphanumeric symbols ranges respectively.

lowercase tailed in a
cursive sans-serif
typeface

Use in writing systems

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/s̻/

/ts/

/z/, /s/

/ts/

/z/

/ts/

/z/ (often /s/ or silent, but /ts/ in loanwords from German and /dz/ in loanwords from
Italian)

/ts/

/θ/, /s/

/z/

/dz/

/z/

/dz/, /ts/

/z/~/dz/

/dz/

/z/

/z/, /s/~/ʃ/

/z/, /g/, /j/

/θ/, /s/

/z/

/ð/

/z/, /dz/, /ð/, /d/

In modern English orthography, the letter ⟨z⟩ usually represents the sound /z/.

It represents /ʒ/ in words like . More often, this sound appears as ⟨su⟩ or ⟨si⟩ in words
such as , , etc. In all these words, /ʒ/ developed from earlier /zj/ by -
coalescence.

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Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin or end with ⟨z⟩, though it occurs within other
words. It is the least frequently used letter in written English,[13] with a frequency of about 0.08%
in words. ⟨z⟩ is more common in the Oxford spelling of British English than in standard British
English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically 'correct' endings, which are closer to
Greek, to endings, which are closer to French; however, is preferred over in Oxford
spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words like . The most common
variety of English it is used in is American English, which prefers both the and endings.
One native Germanic English word that contains 'z', (past , participle ) came to
be spelled that way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with 's' (as with
, and ).

⟨z⟩ is used in writing to represent the act of sleeping (often using multiple z's, like ), as an
onomatopoeia for the sound of closed-mouth human snoring.[14]

⟨z⟩ stands for a voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant /z/, in Albanian, Breton, Czech, Dutch,
French, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovak. It stands for /ts ͡ / in
Chinese pinyin and Jyutping, Finnish (occurs in loanwords only), and German, and is likewise
͡ / and /dz͡ /. In Portuguese,
expressed /ts/ in Old Norse. In Italian, it represents two phonemes, /ts
it stands for /z/ in most cases, but also for /s/ or /ʃ/ (depending on the regional variant) at the
end of syllables. In Basque, it represents the sound /s/.

Castilian Spanish uses the letter to represent /θ/ (as English ⟨th⟩ in ), though in other
dialects (Latin American, Andalusian) this sound has merged with /s/. Before voiced consonants,
the sound is voiced to [ð] or [z], sometimes debbucalized to [ɦ] (as in the surname
[ɡuðˈman], [ɡuzˈman] or [ɡuɦˈman]). This is the only context in which ⟨z⟩ can represent a voiced
sibilant [z] in Spanish, though ⟨s⟩ also represents [z] (or [ɦ], depending on the dialect) in this
environment.

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for the sound /s/ and thus shares the
value of ⟨s⟩; it normally occurs only in loanwords that are spelt with ⟨z⟩ in the source languages.

The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/ in Polish. It is also used in four of the seven officially
recognized digraphs: ⟨cz⟩ (/t͡ʂ/), ⟨dz⟩ (/d͡z/), ⟨rz⟩ (/ʐ/ or /ʂ/) and ⟨sz⟩ (/ʂ/), and is one of the most
frequently used of the consonant letters in that language. (Other Slavic languages avoid digraphs
and mark the corresponding phonemes with the (caron) diacritic: ⟨č⟩, ⟨ď⟩, ⟨ř⟩, ⟨š⟩; this

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system has its origin in Czech orthography of the Hussite period.) ⟨z⟩ can also appear with
diacritical marks, namely ⟨ź⟩ and ⟨ż⟩, which are used to represent the sounds /ʑ/ and /ʐ/. They
also appear in the digraphs ⟨dź⟩ (/d͡ʑ/) and ⟨dż⟩ (/d͡ʐ/).

Hungarian uses ⟨z⟩ in the digraphs ⟨sz⟩ (expressing /s/, as opposed to the value of ⟨s⟩, which is
ʃ), and ⟨zs⟩ (expressing ʒ). The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/.

In Modern Scots, ⟨z⟩ usually represents /z/, but is also used in place of the obsolete letter ⟨ȝ⟩
(yogh), which represents /g/ and /j/. Whilst there are a few common nouns which use ⟨z⟩ in this
manner, such as (pronounced 'brulgey' meaning broil), ⟨z⟩ as a yogh substitute is more
common in people's names and placenames. Often the names are pronounced to follow the
apparent English spelling, so Mackenzie is commonly pronounced with /z/. Menzies, however,
retains the pronunciation of 'Mingus'.

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for [z],
such as in Azerbaijani, Igbo, Indonesian, Shona, Swahili, Tatar, Turkish, and Zulu. ⟨z⟩ represents
[dz͡ ] in Northern Sami and Inari Sami. In Turkmen, ⟨z⟩ represents [ð].

In the Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki, and Hepburn romanisations of Japanese, ⟨z⟩ stands for a
phoneme whose allophones include [z] and [dz] (see Yotsugana). Additionally, in the Nihon-shiki
and Kunrei-shiki systems, ⟨z⟩ is used to represent that same phoneme before /i/, where it's
pronounced [dʑ͡ ~ ʑ].

In the Jyutping romanization of Cantonese, ⟨z⟩ represents /ts/. Other romanizations use either ⟨j⟩,
⟨ch⟩, or ⟨ts⟩.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨z⟩ represents the voiced alveolar sibilant. The graphical
variant ⟨ʒ⟩ was adopted as the sign for the voiced postalveolar fricative.

Other uses

• In mathematics, U+2124 ℤ DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL Z is used to denote the set of integers.

Originally, was just a handwritten version of the bold capital used in printing but, over time,
it has come to be used more frequently in printed works too. The variable z is also commonly
used to represent a complex number.

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• In geometry, z is used to denote the third axis in Cartesian coordinates when representing 3-
dimensional space.

• In chemistry, the letter is used to denote the atomic number of an element (number of
protons), such as =3 for lithium.

• In electrical engineering, is used to denote electrical impedance.

• In astronomy, z is a dimensionless quantity representing redshift.

• In nuclear physics, denotes the atomic number and Z0 denotes a Z boson.

• In computer programming, Z is the abbreviation for the zero flag.

• In Japan, the Z flag is a symbol in the national myth, representing the Battle of Tsushima.

• Z has been used by the Russian Armed Forces as an identifying symbol on its military vehicles,
during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russian civilians have used the symbol to express support
for the invasion.[15][16]

Related characters

• Z with diacritics: Ź ź Ẑ ẑ Ž ž Ż ż Ẓ ẓ Ẕ ẕ Ƶ ƶ ᵶ[17] [18] ᶎ[19] Ⱬⱬ

• ß : German letter regarded as a ligature of long s (ſ) and short s, called or . (In
some typefaces and handwriting styles, it is rather a ligature of long s and tailed z (ſʒ).)

• Ȥ ȥ: Latin letter z with a hook, intended for the transcription of Middle High German, for
instances of the letter with a sound value of /s/.

• Ɀ ɀ : Latin letter Z with swash tail

• Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter ezh

• Ꝣ ꝣ : Visigothic Z

• ᶎ : Z with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin
romanization during the mid-1950s[18]

• International Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to Z: ʒ ʑ ʐ ɮ

• U+1D22 ᴢ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL Z is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet[20]

• Modifier letters ᶻ ᶼ ᶽ are used in phonetic transcription[19]

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• 𐤆 : Semitic letter Zayin, from which the following letters derive:

◦ Ζ ζ : Greek letter Zeta, from which the following letters derive:
▪ Ⲍ ⲍ : Coptic letter Zēta

▪ 𐌆 : Old Italic Z, which is the ancestor of modern Latin Z

▪ 𐌶 : Gothic letter ezec

▪ З з : Cyrillic letter Ze

Other representations

• U+005A Z LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z

• U+007A z LATIN SMALL LETTER Z

NATO phonetic Morse code

Zulu ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ⓘ

American Braille
British manual
Signal flag manual dots-1356
Flag semaphore alphabet (BSL
alphabet (ASL Unified English
fingerspelling)
fingerspelling) Braille

See also

• Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol, U+2621 ☡ CAUTION SIGN

Notes

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References

1. Canada and some Caribbean countries use along with , with the latter being
preferred in written English.

2. "Z", 2nd edition (1989);

(1993); "zee", .

3. One early use of "zee": Lye, Thomas (1969) [2nd ed., London, 1677].
([Link] . Menston, (Yorkshire) Scolar
Press. p. 24 ([Link] .
LCCN 70407159 ([Link] . "Zee Za-cha-ry, Zion, zeal"

4. Chugani, Michael (January 4, 2014). "⼜中⼜英——Mispronunciations are prevalent in

Hong Kong" ([Link]
id=270572&section_name=wtt&kw=-1) . Headline Daily. Archived ([Link]
g/web/20170427102932/[Link]
[Link]?id=270572&section_name=wtt&kw=-1) from the original on April 27, 2017.
Retrieved April 26, 2017.

5. Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott. "ζῆτα" ([Link]

c=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dzh%3Dta) .
. Archived ([Link]
[Link]/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dzh%3Dt
a) from the original on March 6, 2020. Retrieved July 23, 2016.

6. Lindsay, Wallace Martin. The Latin Language: An Historical Account of Latin Sounds, Stems
and Flexions. United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1894. "Martianus Capella tells us that the
letter was removed from the alphabet by Appius Claudius Caecus the famous censor of 312
BC adding the curious reason that in pronouncing it the teeth assumed the appearance of
the teeth of a grinning skull Mart Cap iii 261 z vero idcirco Appius Claudius detestatur quod
dentes mortui dum expri mitur imitatur"

7. "Appius Claudius Caecus and the Letter Z" ([Link]

opaedia_romana/miscellanea/[Link]) .

8. The Encyclopaedia Britannica: Franciscans-Gibson. United Kingdom: At the University Press,

1910. pg. 377 "G"

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9. Ti Alkire & Carol Rosen, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2010), 61.

10. "asset" ([Link] .

(Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership (h
ttps://[Link]/public/login/loggingin#withyourlibrary) required.)

11. "The History of 'Ampersand' " ([Link]

ampersand) . . Retrieved April 5, 2025.

12. "What Character Was Removed From The Alphabet?" ([Link]

ersand/) . . September 7, 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2025.

13. "English letter frequencies" ([Link]

[Link]/emp/LintonT/classes/spring01/cryptography/[Link]) . Archived from
the original ([Link]
[Link]) on June 9, 2010.

14. "How Z-z-z-z-z-z Became Synonymous With Sleep and Snoring" ([Link]
om/blogs/green-sleep/how-did-the-letters-z-z-z-z-become-synonymous-with-sleep-and-sn
oring) . January 24, 2020.

15. "Why has the letter Z become the symbol of war for Russia?" ([Link]
m/world/2022/mar/07/why-has-the-letter-z-become-the-symbol-of-war-for-russia) .
. March 7, 2022. Retrieved March 7, 2022.

16. "Ivan Kuliak: Why has 'Z' become a Russian pro-war symbol?" ([Link]
s/world-europe-60644832) . . March 7, 2022. Retrieved March 7, 2022.

17. Constable, Peter (September 30, 2003). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic
Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF). Archived ([Link]
[Link]/L2/L2003/[Link]) (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017.
Retrieved March 24, 2018.

18. West, Andrew; Chan, Eiso; Everson, Michael (January 16, 2017). "L2/17-013: Proposal to
encode three uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin" ([Link]
017/[Link]) (PDF). Archived ([Link]
4908/[Link] (PDF) from the original
on December 26, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2019.

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19. Constable, Peter (April 19, 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic
characters to the UCS" ([Link]
(PDF). Archived ([Link]
L2/L2004/[Link]) (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017.
Retrieved March 24, 2018.

20. Everson, Michael; et al. (March 20, 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters
for the UCS" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
02/[Link]) (PDF) from the original on February 19, 2018.
Retrieved March 24, 2018.

External links

• The dictionary definition of at Wiktionary

• The dictionary definition of at Wiktionary

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