Zayin
Seventh letter of many Semitic alphabets From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician zayn 𐤆, Hebrew zayīn ז, Aramaic zain 𐡆, Syriac zayn ܙ, and Arabic zāy ز. It represents the sound [z].
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The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z 
, Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З, as well as Ж.
The Proto-Sinaitic glyph may have been called ziqq, may not have been based on a hieroglyph, and may have depicted a "fetter".[1]
An alternative view is that it is based on the "copper ingot" hieroglyph (𓈔) in the form of an axeblade, after noting that the name "zayin" has roots in Aramaic to refer to "Arms," "Armor," and "Metal used for arms."[2]
The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Hebrew, zayin (זין) means "weapon", the verb lĕzayyēn (לזיין) means "to arm", and the verb lĕhizdayyēn (להזדיין) means "to arm oneself".
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 – že (Persian pronunciation: [ʒe]) – in a number of languages, such as Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur (see K̡ona Yezik̡).
| Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glyph form: (Help) |
ژ | ـژ | ـژ | ژ |
| Orthographic variants | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew | Rashi script | ||
| Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | ||
| ז | ז | ז |  |
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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,[3] 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).
Zain is a consonant with the /z/ sound which is a voiced alveolar fricative.
| 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 |
| 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 |
