Nun (letter)

← Mem Nun Samekh →
Phoenician	Hebrew	Aramaic	Syriac	Arabic
	נ,ן		ܢܢ	ن‍,ن
Alphabetic derivatives		Greek	Latin	Cyrillic
		Ν	N	Н
Phonemic representation:				n
Position in alphabet:				14
Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value:				50

Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew נ and Arabic alphabet nūn ن (in abjadi order). It is the third letter in Thaana (ނ), pronounced as "noonu". Its sound value is [n].

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek nu (Ν), Etruscan 𐌍, Latin N, and Cyrillic Н.

Origins

Semitic alphabets
Phoenician (c.1050 – 200 BCE)
𐤀   𐤁   𐤂   𐤃   𐤄 𐤅   𐤆   𐤇   𐤈   𐤉 𐤊   𐤋   𐤌   𐤍   𐤎 𐤏   𐤐   𐤑   𐤒   𐤓 𐤔   𐤕 Semitic abjads
Hebrew (400 BCE – present)
א  ב  ג  ד  ה  ו ז  ח  ט  י  כך ל  מם  נן  ס  ע  פף צץ  ק  ר  ש  ת History · Transliteration Niqqud · Dagesh · Gematria Cantillation · Numeration
Syriac (200 BCE – present)
ܐ  ܒ  ܓ  ܕ  ܗ  ܘ ܙ  ܚ  ܛ  ܝ  ܟܟ  ܠ ܡܡ  ܢܢ  ܣ  ܥ  ܦ ܨ  ܩ  ܪ  ܫ  ܬ
Arabic (400 CE – present)
ا   ب   ت   ث   ج   ح خ   د   ذ   ر   ز   س ش   ص   ض   ط   ظ ع   غ   ف   ق   ك ل   م   ن   ه   و   ي History · Transliteration Diacritics · Hamza ء Numerals · Numeration

Nun is thought to have come from a pictogram of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of a fish in water for its origin (in Arabic, nūn means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was named nūn "fish", but the glyph has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite naḥš "snake", based on the name in Ethiopic, ultimately from a hieroglyph representing a snake,

(see Middle Bronze Age alphabets). Naḥš in modern Arabic literally means "bad luck". The cognate letter in Ge'ez and descended Semitic languages of Ethiopia is nehas, which also means "brass".

Hebrew Nun

Orthographic variants
position in word	Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi Script
	Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
non final	נ	נ	נ
final	ן	ן	ן

Hebrew spelling: נוּן

Pronunciation

Nun represents an alveolar nasal, (IPA: /n/), like the English letter N.

Variations

Nun, like Kaph, Mem, Pe, and Tzadi, has a final form, used at the end of words. Its shape changes from נ to ן. There are also nine instances of an inverted nun (׆) in the Tanakh.

Significance

In gematria, Nun represents the number 50. Its final form represents 700 but this is rarely used, Tav and Shin (400+300) being used instead.

As in Arabic, nun as an abbreviation can stand for neqevah, feminine. In medieval Rabbinic writings, Nun Sophit (Final Nun) stood for "Son of" (Hebrew ben or ibn).

Nun is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, Ayin, Teth, Gimmel, Zayin, and Tzadi.

In the game of dreidel, a rolled Nun passes play to the next player with no other action.

Arabic nūn

The letter is named nūn, and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form:	ن‎	ـن‎	ـنـ‎	نـ‎

Some examples on its uses in Modern Standard Arabic:

Nūn is used as a suffix indicating present-tense plural feminine nouns; for example هِيَ تَكْتُب hiya taktub ("she writes") becomes هُنَّ تَكْتَبْنَ hunna taktabna ("they [feminine] write").

Nūn is also used as the prefix for first-person plural imperfective/present tense verbs. Thus هُوَ يَكْتُب huwwa yaktub ("he writes") → نَحْنُ نَكْتُب naḥnu naktub ("we write").

Character encodings

Character	נ		ן		ن		ܢ		ࠍ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER NUN		HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN		ARABIC LETTER NOON		SYRIAC LETTER NUN		SAMARITAN LETTER NUN
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1504	U+05E0	1503	U+05DF	1606	U+0646	1826	U+0722	2061	U+080D
UTF-8	215 160	D7 A0	215 159	D7 9F	217 134	D9 86	220 162	DC A2	224 160 141	E0 A0 8D
Numeric character reference	נ	נ	ן	ן	ن	ن	ܢ	ܢ	ࠍ	ࠍ

Character	𐎐		𐡍		𐤍
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER NUN		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER NUN		PHOENICIAN LETTER NUN
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	66448	U+10390	67661	U+1084D	67853	U+1090D
UTF-8	240 144 142 144	F0 90 8E 90	240 144 161 141	F0 90 A1 8D	240 144 164 141	F0 90 A4 8D
UTF-16	55296 57232	D800 DF90	55298 56397	D802 DC4D	55298 56589	D802 DD0D
Numeric character reference	𐎐	𐎐	𐡍	𐡍	𐤍	𐤍

See also

• Nunation
• Setaceous Hebrew Character (Xestia c-nigrum) - a moth of the family Noctuidae.