Eta

History Diacritics and other symbols Related topics

• Use as scientific symbols
• Orthography
• Romanization
• Cyrillization

Eta ( ; uppercase Η, lowercase η; Ancient Greek: ἦταē̂ta or Greek: ήταita) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect was a long open-mid front unrounded vowel, , which was later raised to in Hellenistic Greek, a process known as iotacism or itacism.

In the ancient Attic number system (Herodianic or acrophonic numbers), the number 100 was represented by "Η", because it was the initial of ΗΕΚΑΤΟΝ, the ancient spelling of ἑκατόν = "one hundred". In the later system of (Classical) Greek numerals eta represents 8.

Eta was derived from the Phoenician letterheth𐤇‎. Letters that arose from eta include the Latin H and the Cyrillic letters И and Й.