Z

Z, or z, is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the modern English

Z
alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its usual names in

Zz
English are zed (pronounced /ˈzɛd/) and zee /ˈziː/, with an
occasional archaic variant izzard /ˈɪzərd/.[1]

(See below, Typography)

Contents
Name and pronunciation
History
Semitic
Greek
Etruscan
Latin
Old English
Last letter of the alphabet
Variant and derived forms Usage

Pronunciation and use Writing system Latin script

English Type Alphabetic and
Other languages Logographic
Other systems Language of Latin language
Other uses origin

Related characters Phonetic usage [z]

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet [ʒ]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets [t͡ s]

[d͡ z]

Computing codes
[ð]

Other representations [θ]

See also [s]

References [ʃ]

/zɛd/

External links
/ziː/
Unicode U+005A,
Name and pronunciation codepoint U+007A
Alphabetical 26
In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, position
India, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the letter's
name is zed /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta History
(this dates to Latin, which borrowed X, Y, and Z from Greek, Development
along with their names), but in American English its name is zee
/ziː/, analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a
late 17th-century English dialectal form.[2]

Another English dialectal form is izzard /ˈɪzərd/. This dates from

the mid-18th century and probably derives from Occitan izèda or
the French ézed, whose reconstructed Latin form would be
*idzēta,[1] perhaps a Vulgar Latin form with a prosthetic vowel. Ζζ
Its variants are still used in Hong Kong English and Cantonese.[3]
𐌆
Other languages spell the letter's name in a similar way: zeta in
Zz
Italian, Basque, Spanish, and Icelandic (no longer part of its
alphabet but found in personal names), zê in Portuguese, zäta in
Time period ~700 BC to
Swedish, zæt in Danish, zet in Dutch, Indonesian, Polish,
present
Romanian, and Czech, Zett in German (capitalised as a noun),
zett in Norwegian, zède in French, zetto ( ゼ ッ ト ) in Japanese Descendants  • Ʒ

romaji, and zét in Vietnamese. Several languages render it as /ts/  • Ç

or /dz/, e.g. zeta /tseta/ or more rarely /tset/ in Finnish  • Ƶ

(sometimes dropping the first t altogether; /seta/, or /set/ the  • Ž

latter of which is not very commonplace). In Standard Chinese  • Ż

pinyin, the name of the letter Z is pronounced [tsɨ], as in "zi",  • 𐌶

although the English zed and zee have become very common. In
 • ℤ

Esperanto, the name of the letter Z is pronounced /zo/.

 • Ꮓ
Sisters З

History Ѕ

Phoenician  
Etruscan
Greek

Zayin Z Zeta Ԇ

‫
‬ז‬
Semitic ‫
ز‬
‫
ܙ‬
The Semitic symbol was the seventh letter, named zayin, which ‫
‬ژ‬
meant "weapon" or "sword". It represented either the sound /z/ ࠆ

as in English and French, or possibly more like /dz/ (as in Italian ዘ

zeta, zero). 𐎇

Զ զ

Greek Ꮓ

The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the Phoenician Zayin ( Ꮸ

), and the Greek inscriptional form remained in this shape ડ

throughout ancient times. The Greeks called it zeta, a new name ઢ

made in imitation of eta (η) and theta (θ). ज़

In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems Variations (See below,
to have represented /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC Typography)
onwards, it seems to have stood for /zd/ and /dz/ – there is no Other
consensus concerning this issue.[4] In other dialects, such as Other letters z(x), cz, dž, dz,
Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds commonly used sz, dzs, tzsch
resembling the English voiced and voiceless th (IPA /ð/ and /θ/, with
respectively). In the common dialect (koine) that succeeded the
older dialects, ζ became /z/, as it remains in modern Greek.

Etruscan

The Etruscan letter Z was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, most probably through the Greek
alphabet used on the island of Ischia. In Etruscan, this letter may have represented /ts/.

Latin

The letter z was part of the earliest form of the Latin alphabet, adopted from Etruscan. Because the
sound /z/ in Latin changed to /r/ by rhotacism in the fifth century BC, z was dropped and its place
given to the new letter g. In the 1st century BC, z was reintroduced at the end of the Latin alphabet to
represent the sound of the Greek zeta /dz/, as the letter y was introduced to represent the sound of
the Greek upsilon /y/.[5]

Before the reintroduction of z, the sound of zeta was written s at the beginning of words and ss in the
middle of words, as in sōna for ζώνη "belt" and trapessita for τραπεζίτης "banker".

In some inscriptions, z represented a Vulgar Latin sound, likely an affricate, formed by the merging of
the reflexes of Classical Latin /j/, /dj/ and /gj/: for example, zanuariu for ianuariu "January",
ziaconus for diaconus "deacon", and oze for hodie "today".[6] Likewise, /di/ sometimes replaced /z/
in words like baptidiare for baptizare "to baptize". In modern Italian, z represents /ts/ or /dz/,
whereas the reflexes of ianuarius and hodie are written with the letter g (representing /dʒ/ when
before i and e): gennaio, oggi. In other languages, such as Spanish, further evolution of the sound
occurred.

Old English

Old English used S alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced sibilant. The Latin sound imported
through French was new and was not written with Z but with G or I. The successive changes can be
seen in the doublet forms jealous and zealous. Both of these come from a late Latin zelosus, derived
from the imported Greek ζῆλος zêlos. The earlier form is jealous; its initial sound is the [dʒ], which
developed to Modern French [ʒ]. John Wycliffe wrote the word as gelows or ielous.

Z at the end of a word was pronounced ts, as in English assets, from Old French asez "enough"
(Modern French assez), from Vulgar Latin ad satis ("to sufficiency").[7]

Last letter of the alphabet

In earlier times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related
typographic symbols.[8] In her 1859 novel Adam Bede, George Eliot refers to Z being followed by &
when her character Jacob Storey says, "He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th' alphabet
like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see."[9]
Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for the
Icelandic, Finnish and Swedish alphabets is Ö, while it is Å for Danish and Norwegian. In the German
alphabet, the umlauts (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, and Ü/ü) and the letter ß (Eszett or scharfes S) are regarded
respectively as modifications of the vowels a/o/u and as a (standardized) variant spelling of ss, not as
independent letters, so they come after the unmodified letters in the alphabetical order. The German
alphabet ends with z.

Variant and derived forms

A glyph variant of Z originating in the medieval Gothic minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter
typefaces is the "tailed z" (German geschwänztes Z, also Z mit Unterschlinge). In some Antiqua
typefaces, this letter is present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Ligated with long s (ſ), it is part of
the origin of the Eszett (ß) in the German alphabet. The character ezh (Ʒ) resembles a tailed z, as does
the yogh (ȝ), with which it came to be indistinguishable in Middle English writing.

Unicode assigns codepoints U+2128 ℨ BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL Z (HTML  ℨ  · ℨ,

ℨ) and U+1D537 𝔷 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR SMALL Z (HTML  𝔷  · 𝔷) in the
Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical alphanumeric symbols ranges respectively.

lowercase z in a sans
cursive z serif
typeface

There is also a variant with a stroke.

Pronunciation and use

 Pronunciations of Zz
Pronunciation
Language Dialect(s) Environment Notes
(IPA)
Basque /s̻ /
Finnish /ts/ Only used in loanwords
German Standard /ts/
Inari Sami /dz/
Indonesian /z/
/dz/
Italian Standard
/ts/
/dz/ Before /ɯ/ Latinization; see
Japanese Standard
/z/ Elsewhere Yotsugana

Mandarin Standard /ts/ Pinyin latinization

Northern Sami /dz/
Some words and
/g/
names
Scots Some words and
/j/
names
/z/ Usually
Most of European /θ/
Spanish American, Andalusian,
/s/
Canarian
Turkmen /ð/
/d/ Dialectal, archaic
Venetian /dz/
/ð/ Dialectal, archaic

English

In modern English orthography, the letter ⟨z⟩ usually represents the sound /z/.

It represents /ʒ/ in words like seizure. More often, this sound appears as ⟨su⟩ or ⟨si⟩ in words such as
measure, decision, etc. In all these words, /ʒ/ developed from earlier /zj/ by yod-coalescence.

Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin with ⟨z⟩, though it occurs in words beginning with
other letters. It is the least frequently used letter in written English,[10] with a frequency of about
0.08% in words.
⟨z⟩ is more common in the Oxford spelling of British English than in standard British
English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically 'correct' -ize endings, which are closer to
Greek, to -ise endings, which are closer to French; however, -yse is preferred over -yze in Oxford
spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words like analyse. The most common variety of
English it is used in is American English, which prefers both the -ize and -yze endings. One native
Germanic English word that contains 'z', freeze (past froze, participle frozen) came to be spelled that
way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with 's' (as with choose, chose and chosen).
⟨z⟩ is used in writing to represent the act of sleeping (sometimes using multiple z's like zzzz). It is used
because closed-mouth human snoring often sounds like the pronunciation of this letter.

Other languages

⟨z⟩ stands for a voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant /z/, in Albanian, Breton, Czech, Dutch,
French, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and the International
Phonetic Alphabet. It stands for /t͡ s/ in Chinese pinyin, Finnish (occurs in loanwords only), and
German, and is likewise expressed /ts/ in Old Norse. In Italian, it represents two phonemes, /t͡ s/ and
/d͡ z/. In Portuguese, it stands for /z/ in most cases, but also for /s/ or /ʃ/ (depending on the regional
variant) at the end of syllables. In Basque, it represents the sound /s/.

Castilian Spanish uses the letter to represent /θ/ (as English ⟨th⟩ in thing), though in other dialects
(Latin American, Andalusian) this sound has merged with /s/. Before voiced consonants, the sound is
voiced to [ð] or [z], sometimes debbucalized to [ɦ] (as in the surname Guzmán [ɡuðˈman], [ɡuzˈman]
or [ɡuɦˈman]). This is the only context in which ⟨z⟩ can represent a voiced sibilant [z] in Spanish,
though ⟨s⟩ also represents [z] (or [ɦ], depending on the dialect) in this environment.

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for the sound /s/ and thus shares the value of
⟨s⟩; it normally occurs only in loanwords that are spelt with ⟨z⟩ in the source languages.

The letter ⟨z⟩ on its own represents /z/ in Polish. It is also used in four of the seven officially
recognized digraphs: ⟨cz⟩ (/t͡ ʂ/), ⟨dz⟩ (/d͡ z/ or /t͡ s/), ⟨rz⟩ (/ʐ/ or /ʂ/, sometimes it represents a sequence
/rz/) and ⟨sz⟩ (/ʂ/), and is the most frequently used of the consonants in that language. (Other Slavic
languages avoid digraphs and mark the corresponding phonemes with the háček (caron) diacritic: ⟨č⟩,
⟨ď⟩, ⟨ř⟩, ⟨š⟩; this system has its origin in Czech orthography of the Hussite period.) ⟨z⟩ can also appear
with diacritical marks, namely ⟨ź⟩ and ⟨ż⟩, which are used to represent the sounds /ʑ/ and /ʐ/. They
also appear in the digraphs ⟨dź⟩ (/d͡ ʑ/ or /t͡ ɕ/) and ⟨dż⟩ (/d͡ ʐ/ or /t͡ ʂ/).

Hungarian uses ⟨z⟩ in the digraphs ⟨sz⟩ (expressing /s/, as opposed to the value of ⟨s⟩, which is ʃ), and
⟨zs⟩ (expressing ʒ).

In Modern Scots ⟨z⟩ is used in place of the obsolete letter ⟨ȝ⟩ (yogh) and should be pronounced as a
hard 'g'. Whilst there are a few common nouns which use ⟨z⟩ in this manner, such as brulzie
(pronounced 'brulgey' meaning broil), z as a yogh substitute is more common in people's names and
place-names. Often the names are mispronounced to follow the apparent English spelling so
Mackenzie is commonly pronounced with a 'z' sound. Menzies, however, still retains the correct
pronunciation of 'Mingus'.[11]

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, ⟨z⟩ usually stands for [z], such
as in Azerbaijani, Igbo, Indonesian, Shona, Swahili, Tatar, Turkish, and Zulu. ⟨z⟩ represents [d͡ z] in
Northern Sami and Inari Sami. In Turkmen, ⟨z⟩ represents [ð].

In the Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn romanisations of Japanese, ⟨z⟩ stands for a phoneme whose
allophones include [z] and [dz].

Other systems

A graphical variant of ⟨z⟩ is ⟨ʒ⟩, which has been adopted into the International Phonetic Alphabet as
the sign for the voiced postalveolar fricative.
Other uses
In mathematics, U+2124 ℤ (DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL Z) is used to denote the set of integers.
Originally, was just a handwritten version of the bold capital Z used in printing but, over time, it
has come to be used more frequently in printed works too.

In chemistry, the letter Z is used to denote the Atomic number of an element (number of protons),
such as Z=3 for Lithium. In electrical engineering, Z is used to denote electrical impedance.

The Z boson is a particle in nuclear physics.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Z with diacritics: Ź ź Ẑ ẑ Ž ž Ż ż Ẓ ẓ Ẕ ẕ Ƶ ƶ ᵶ[12] Ᶎ[13] ᶎ[14] Ⱬ ⱬ
ß : German letter regarded as a ligature of long s (ſ) and short s, called scharfes S or Eszett. (In
some typefaces and handwriting styles it is rather a ligature of long s and tailed z (ſʒ).)
Ȥ ȥ: Latin letter z with a hook, intended for the transcription of Middle High German, for instances
of the letter z with a sound value of /s/.
Ɀ ɀ : Latin letter Z with swash tail
Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter ezh
Ꝣ ꝣ : Visigothic Z
Ᶎ ᶎ : Z with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin
romanization during the mid-1950s[13]
IPA-specific symbols related to Z: ʒ ʑ ʐ ɮ
U+1D22 ᴢ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL Z is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet[15]
Modifier letters ᶻ ᶼ ᶽ are used in phonetic transcription[14]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

𐤆 : Semitic letter Zayin, from which the following letters derive
Ζ ζ : Greek letter Zeta, from which the following letters derive

Ⲍ ⲍ : Coptic letter Zēta

𐌆 : Old Italic Z, which is the ancestor of modern Latin Z
𐌶 : Gothic letter ezec
З з : Cyrillic letter Ze

Computing codes
 Character information

Preview Z z
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z LATIN SMALL LETTER Z

Encodings decimal hex decimal hex

Unicode 90 U+005A 122 U+007A
UTF-8 90 5A 122 7A
Numeric character reference Z Z z z
EBCDIC family 233 E9 169 A9

ASCII 1 90 5A 122 7A

1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of
encodings.

On German typewriter- and computer keyboards (in comparison to those used in the UK/US), the
positions of the letters Z and Y are swapped. (In German, Y is only used in loanwords and names.)

Other representations
NATO phonetic Morse code

Zulu
  ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ 

American Braille dots-

British manual
Signal flag manual 1356

Flag semaphore alphabet (BSL

alphabet (ASL Unified
fingerspelling)
fingerspelling) English Braille

See also
Zed
Zee
Z flag

References
1. "Z", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International
Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "zee", op. cit.
 2. One early use of "zee": Lye, Thomas (1969) [2nd ed., London, 1677]. A new spelling book, 1677
(https://archive.org/details/newspellingbook100lyet). Menston, (Yorkshire) Scolar Press. p. 24 (htt
ps://archive.org/details/newspellingbook100lyet/page/n11). LCCN 70407159 (https://lccn.loc.gov/7
0407159). "Zee Za-cha-ry, Zion, zeal"
3. Michael Chugani (2014-01-04). "又中又英——Mispronunciations are prevalent in Hong Kong" (htt
p://news.stheadline.com/dailynews/headline_news_detail_columnist.asp?id=270572&section_na
me=wtt&kw=-1). Headline Daily. Retrieved 2017-04-26.
4. Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott. "ζῆτα" (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perse
us%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dzh%3Dta). An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon.
Retrieved July 23, 2016.
5. James Grout: Appius Claudius Caecus and the Letter Z (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/enc
yclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/zed.html), part of the Encyclopædia Romana
6. Ti Alkire & Carol Rosen, Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 61.
7. "asset" (https://oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=asset). Oxford English Dictionary
(Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership (https://www.
oed.com/public/login/loggingin#withyourlibrary) required.)
8. "alphabet-e1309627843933.jpg" (http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/
06/alphabet-e1309627843933.jpg). Retrieved 2018-07-31.
9. George Eliot: Adam Bede. Chapter XXI. online (http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk
_files=217795&pageno=152) at Project Gutenberg
10. "English letter frequencies" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100609184153/http://pages.central.ed
u/emp/LintonT/classes/spring01/cryptography/letterfreq.html). Archived from the original (http://pa
ges.central.edu/emp/LintonT/classes/spring01/cryptography/letterfreq.html) on 2010-06-09.
11. Scots Language, accessed 6 September 2019
12. Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle
Tilde in the UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2003/03174r2-mid-tilde.pdf) (PDF).
13. West, Andrew; Chan, Eiso; Everson, Michael (2017-01-16). "L2/17-013: Proposal to encode three
uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17013-n4782-lati
n.pdf) (PDF).
14. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the
UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.pdf) (PDF).
15. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the
UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-phonetic.pdf) (PDF).

External links
Media related to Z at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of Z at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of z at Wiktionary

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