Zayin

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. It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪘‎‎, South Arabian 𐩸, and Ge'ez ዘ.‌ The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z , Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З, as well as Ж.

Origin

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".

Arabic zāy

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

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. In Maltese, the corresponding letter to ز is ż.

Variant

A variant letter of zāy named že is used in Persian with three dots above instead of just one dot above. The letter is used in a number of languages, such as Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur (see K̡ona Yezik̡).

Hebrew zayin

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)

Shabbat, the receiver, is the letter Zayin that has two heads – which represents both love and fear

— Maggid of Mezeritch

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).

Syriac zain

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

See also

• ژ - že

References

1. ^ Colless, Brian E. (2014). "The origin of the alphabet: an examination of the Goldwasser hypothesis". Antiguo Oriente. 12: 71–104. Archived 2022-10-14 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2023-05-06.
2. ^ Cross, F. M. (1980) Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 238, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1356511 Archived 2019-07-15 at the Wayback Machine
3. ^ "Gematria Chart". Archived from the original on 2011-12-26. Retrieved 2011-11-29.