Zayin

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

← Waw Zayin Heth →
Phoenician
Hebrew	ז‎
Aramaic
Syriac	ܙ
Arabic	ز
Phonemic representation	z
Position in alphabet	7
Numerical value	7
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek	Ζ
Latin	Z, Ʒ, ẞ
Cyrillic	З

Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Zayin , Hebrew 'Zayin ז‎, Yiddish Zoyen ז‎, Aramaic Zain , Syriac Zayn ܙ, and Arabic Zayn or Zāy ز. It represents the sound [z].

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

Meaning

The Proto-Sinaitic glyph may have been called ziqq, based on a hieroglyph depicting a "manacle".

The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Mishnaic Hebrew, zayin (זין‎) means "sword", and the verb lezayen (לזיין‎) means "to arm". In Modern Hebrew slang, zayin (זין‎) means "penis" and lezayen (לזין‎) is a vulgar term which generally means to perform sexual intercourse, although the older meaning survives in maavak mezuyan ("armed struggle") (מאבק מזוין‎), kokhot mezuyanim ("armed forces") (כוחות מזוינים‎), and beton mezuyan (בטון מזוין‎) ("armed, i.e., reinforced concrete").

Arabic zāy

The letter is named zāy. It has two forms, depending on its position in the word:

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	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.

The same letter has another name – ze – in a number of languages, such as Persian.

Že

Main article: ژ

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

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

Hebrew zayin

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

Numerical value (gematria)

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).

Use in Torah scroll

Zayin, in addition to ʻayin, gimel, teth, nun, shin, and tzadi, is one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll).

Meaning as a noun

For the Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew meaning of 'zayin' as a noun, see above.

It is one of several Hebrew letters that have an additional meaning as a noun. The others are: bet [ב‎, the 2nd letter], whose name is a grammatical form of the word for 'house' (בית); vav [ו‎, the 6th letter], whose name means 'hook' (וו); kaf [כ‎, the 11th], whose name means 'palm [of the hand]' or 'tablespoon' (כף); ʻayin [ע‎, the 16th], whose name means 'eye' (עין); pe [פ‎, the 17th], whose name means 'mouth' (פה); qof [ק‎, the 19th], whose name means 'monkey' or "eye of needle" (קוף); tav [ת‎, the 22nd], 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 consonant with the /z/ sound which is a voiced alveolar fricative.

Character encodings

Character information

Preview	ז		ز		ܙ		ࠆ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER ZAYIN		ARABIC LETTER ZAIN		SYRIAC LETTER ZAIN		SAMARITAN LETTER ZEN
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	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 information

Preview	𐎇		𐡆		𐤆
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER ZETA		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER ZAYIN		PHOENICIAN LETTER ZAI
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	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