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Z (or z) is the 26th and last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual names in English are ''zed'' () and ''zee'' (), with an occasional archaic variant ''izzard'' ()."Z", ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993); "zee", ''op. cit''.


Name and pronunciation

In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is ''zed'' , reflecting its derivation from the Greek '' zeta'' (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
its name is ''zee'' , analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form. Another English dialectal form is ''izzard'' . This dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives from
Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...
or the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, whose reconstructed Latin form would be ''*idzēta'', perhaps a
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
form with a prosthetic vowel. Its variants are still used in Hong Kong English and Cantonese. 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 Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, in
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
, in Dutch,
Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...
,
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
,
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
, and Czech, in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
(capitalised as a noun), in Norwegian, in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, in Japanese, and in Vietnamese. Several languages render it as or , e.g. or more rarely in Finnish (sometimes dropping the first ''t'' altogether; , or the latter of which is not very commonplace). In
Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
pinyin, the name of the letter Z is pronounced , as in "zi", although the English ''zed'' and ''zee'' have become very common. In
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
the name of the letter Z is pronounced . Under the
NATO spelling alphabet The (International) Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, is the most widely used set of clear code words for communicating the letters of the Roman alphabet, technically a ''radiotelephonic spellin ...
, the letter is signified with ''ZULU'', like the Zulu people.


History


Semitic

The
Semitic symbol Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...
was the seventh letter, named '' zayin'', which meant "weapon" or "sword". It represented either the sound as in English and French, or possibly more like (as in Italian ', ').


Greek

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 '' zeta'', a new name made in imitation of ''
eta Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
'' (η) and '' theta'' (θ). In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems to have represented ; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have stood for and – there is no consensus concerning this issue. In other dialects, such as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and voiceless ''th'' (IPA and , respectively). In the common dialect (
koine Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became , as it remains in modern Greek.


Etruscan

The
Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan ...
letter ''Z'' was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, most probably through the Greek alphabet used on the island of Ischia. In
Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan ...
, this letter may have represented .


Latin

The letter Z was borrowed from the Greek Zeta, most likely to represent the sound /
t͡s A voiceless alveolar affricate is a type of affricate consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are several type ...
/. At c. 300 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor, removed the letter Z from the alphabet, allegedly due to his distaste for the letter, in that it "looked like the tongue of a corpse". A more likely explanation is the sound had disappeared from Latin, making the letter useless for spelling Latin words. It is also thought due to
rhotacism Rhotacism () or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language fa ...
, Z became a trilled R sound, / r/. Whatever the case may be, Appius Claudius' distaste for the letter Z is today credited as the reason for its removal. A few centuries later, after the
Roman Conquest of Greece Greece in the Roman era describes the Roman conquest of Greece, as well as the period of Greek history when Greece was dominated first by the Roman Republic and then by the Roman Empire. The Roman era of Greek history began with the Corinthian ...
, Z was again borrowed to spell words from the prestigious Attic dialect of Greek. Before the reintroduction of ''z'', the sound of zeta was written ''s'' at the beginning of words and ''ss'' in the middle of words, as in ' for "belt" and ' for "banker". In some inscriptions, ''z'' represented a
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
sound, likely an
affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
, formed by the merging of the
reflexes In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a Stimulus (physiology), stimulus. Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous s ...
of Classical Latin , and : for example, ' for ' "January", ' for ' "deacon", and ' for ' "today". Likewise, sometimes replaced in words like ' for ' "to baptize". In modern Italian, ''z'' represents or , whereas the reflexes of ' and ' are written with the letter ''g'' (representing when before ''i'' and ''e''): ', '. In other languages, such as Spanish, further evolution of the sound occurred.


Old English

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
used ''S'' alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced
sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
. The Latin sound imported through French was new and was not written with ''Z'' but with ''G'' or ''I''. The successive changes can be seen in the
doublet Doublet is a word derived from the Latin ''duplus'', "twofold, twice as much",


Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

* Z with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s: Ź ź Ẑ ẑ Ž ž Ż ż Ẓ ẓ Ẕ ẕ Ƶ ƶ ᵶ Ᶎ
The palatal hook () is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent palatalized consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and is distinguished from ...
Ⱬ ⱬ * 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 ''z'' with a sound value of /s/. * Ɀ ɀ : Latin letter
Z with swash tail Ɀ (lowercase: ɀ) is a Latin letter z with a "swash tail" (encoded by Unicode, at codepoints U+2C7F for uppercase and U+0240 for lowercase) was used as a phonetic symbol by linguists studying African languages to represent a voiced labio-alve ...
* Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter
ezh Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) , also called the "tailed z", is a letter whose lower case form is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), representing the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. For example, the pronunciation of "si" in ''vi ...
* Ꝣ ꝣ : Visigothic Z * Ᶎ ᶎ : Z with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s *
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
-specific symbols related to Z: * is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet * Modifier letters ᶻ ᶼ ᶽ are used in phonetic transcription


Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

* 𐤆 :
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
letter Zayin, from which the following letters derive ** Ζ ζ : Greek letter Zeta, from which the following letters derive *** :
Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet ...
letter Zēta *** 𐌆 : Old Italic Z, which is the ancestor of modern Latin Z *** :
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
letter ezec *** З з :
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
letter Ze


Computing codes

: 1 On the QWERTZ keyboard used in Central Europe the Z replaces the Y of the standard US/UK QWERTY keyboard as the sixth letter of the first row.


Other representations


See also

*
Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol The dangerous bend or caution symbol ☡ () was created by the Nicolas Bourbaki group of mathematicians and appears in the margins of mathematics books written by the group. It resembles a road sign that indicates a "dangerous bend" in the roa ...
, *
Z with stroke Ƶ (minuscule: ƶ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from Z with the addition of a stroke through the centre. Use in alphabets Ƶ is used in the latin version of the Karachay-Balkar alphabet to represent palatalization, with ь as ...
, Ƶ * Zed * Zee * Z flag * Z (military symbol)


References


External links

* * * {{Latin script, Z} ISO basic Latin letters