Zayin

This article is about Semitic letter. For other uses, see Zayn.

← Waw Zayn Heth →
Phoenician	Hebrew	Aramaic	Syriac	Arabic
	ז		ܙ	ز
Alphabetic derivatives		Greek	Latin	Cyrillic
		Ζ	Z	З
Phonemic representation:				z
Position in alphabet:				7
Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value:				7

Zayin (also spelled Zain or Zayn or simply Zay) is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician 𐤆, Aramaic, Hebrew ז, Syriac ܙ and Perso-Arabic alphabet ز (see below). It represents the sound [z].

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z , Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З.

The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. (In Biblical Hebrew, zayin (זין) means sword, and the verb lezayen (לזיין) means to arm. In modern Hebrew, zayin (זין) means penis and lezayen (לזין) is a vulgar term which generally means to perform sexual intercourse and is used in a similar fashion to the English word fuck, although the older meaning survives in "maavak mezuyan" (armed struggle) (מאבק מזוין) and "beton mezuyan" (בטון מזוין) (armed, i.e., reinforced concrete). The Proto-Sinaitic glyph according to Brian Colless may have been called ziqq, based on a hieroglyph depicting a "manacle".

Hebrew zayin

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

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

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

Zayin is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See ʻayin, gimel, teth, nun, shin, and tzadi. It is one of several Hebrew letters that have an additional meaning as a noun. The others are: bet [ב, the second letter] whose name is a grammatical form of the word for 'house' (בית); vav [ו, the sixth letter] whose name means 'hook' (וו); kaf [כ, the eleventh letter] whose name means 'palm [of the hand]' (כף); ʻayin [ע, the sixteenth letter] whose name means 'eye' (עין); pe [פ, the seventeenth letter] whose name means 'mouth' (פה); qof [ק, the nineteenth letter] whose name means 'monkey' (קוף); shin [ש, the twenty-first letter] whose name means 'tooth' (שין); tav [the twenty-second letter] whose name means 'mark' (תו), and several other Hebrew letters whose names are ancient Hebrew forms of nouns still used, with a slight change of form or pronunciation, as nouns in modern Hebrew.

Syriac zain

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

Arabic zayn

The letter is named zayn/zāy). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form:	ز‎	ـز‎	ـز‎	ز‎

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.

Ze

Persian alphabet
ﺍ    ﺏ    پ    ﺕ    ﺙ     ﺝ    چ
ﺡ    ﺥ    ﺩ    ﺫ    ﺭ    ﺯ    ژ
ﺱ    ﺵ     ﺹ    ﺽ    ﻁ    ﻅ
ﻉ    ﻍ    ﻑ    ﻕ    ک    گ
ﻝ    ﻡ    ﻥ    ﻭ    ه    ی
History Transliteration Diacritics Hamza ء Numerals Numeration

The same letter is used in a number of languages with another name: ze.

Že

Main article: ژ

It also has a modified version: ژ Persian pronunciation: [ʒe] which are used in Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur (see K̡ona Yezik̡).

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form:	ژ‎	ـژ‎	ـژ‎	ژ‎

Character encodings

Character	ז		ز		ܙ		ࠆ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER ZAYIN		ARABIC LETTER ZAIN		SYRIAC LETTER ZAIN		SAMARITAN LETTER ZEN
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1494	U+05D6	1586	U+0632	1817	U+0719	2054	U+0806
UTF-8	215 150	D7 96	216 178	D8 B2	220 153	DC 99	224 160 134	E0 A0 86
Numeric character reference	ז	ז	ز	ز	ܙ	ܙ	ࠆ	ࠆ

Character	𐎇		𐡆		𐤆
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER ZETA		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER ZAYIN		PHOENICIAN LETTER ZAI
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	66439	U+10387	67654	U+10846	67846	U+10906
UTF-8	240 144 142 135	F0 90 8E 87	240 144 161 134	F0 90 A1 86	240 144 164 134	F0 90 A4 86
UTF-16	55296 57223	D800 DF87	55298 56390	D802 DC46	55298 56582	D802 DD06
Numeric character reference	𐎇	𐎇	𐡆	𐡆	𐤆	𐤆

See also

• ڤ - Ve
• پ - Pe
• گ - Gāf
• چ - Che