Greek Alphabet Chart

I’ll still continue to transliterate the Greek text in my blog posts, but for those of you who want a little bit more, here is a Greek alphabet chart, complete with transliteration, pronunciation helps, and the numerical value of each Greek letter, so you can easily tell who the antichrist is. I have added a second table of obsolete Greek letters based on some comments received.

English Spelling	Greek Spelling	Capital (Print)	Lower Case	Translit- eration	Pronun- ciation	Numerical Value
alpha	ἀλφα	Α	α	a	father	1
bēta	βητα	Β	β	b	baby	2
gamma	γαμμα	Γ	γ	g	girl	3
delta	δελτα	Δ	δ	d	dad	4
epsilon	ἐψιλον	Ε	ε or ε	e	met	5[1]
zēta	ζητα	Ζ	ζ	z	zone/adz[2]	7
ēta	ἠτα	Η	η	ē[3]	fête	8
thēta	θητα	Θ	θ	th	thin	9
iōta	ἰωτα	Ι	ι	i	machine or hit[4]	10
kappa	καππα	Κ	κ	k	kite	20
lambda	λαμβδα	Λ	λ	l	lake	30
mu	μυ	Μ	μ	m	mom	40
nu	νυ	Ν	ν	n	nun	50
xi	ξι	Ξ	ξ	x	ax	60
omikron	ὀμικρον	Ο	ο	o	hot	70
pi	πι	Π	π	p	pen	80[5]
rhō	ῥω	Ρ	ρ	r	rhyme	100[6]
sigma (final)	σιγμα	Σ	σ ς	s	send this	200
tau	ταυ	Τ	τ	t	table	300
upsilon	ὐψιλον	Υ	υ	y/u[7]	book	400[8]
phi	φι	Φ	φ	ph	phone	500
chi	χι	Χ	χ	ch	loch	600
psi	ψι	Ψ	ψ	ps	rips	700
ōmega	ὠμεγα	Ω	ω	ō	tone	800[9]

[1] The Pre-Koine Greek alphabet had the letter digamma (Ϝ, value = 6) next.

[2] Some prefer the /dz/ pronunciation when the letter is in the middle of the word. The transliteration is still the same.

[3] Strong’s Concordance uses “ee” to transliterate this letter.

[4] Long like machine when it ends a syllable; short like hit when in a consonant-terminated syllable.

[5] The pre-Koine Greek alphabet had the letter koppa or qoppa (ϙ/ϟ, value = 90) next. Compare to Hebrew qoph:ק.

[6] When a word begins with rho, it always has a rough breathing mark (ῥ, Ῥ) unless it is a loan word.

[7] Use u when the upsilon appears in a diphthong (two vowels making one sound), but y when it stands alone or has the diaeresis over it (ϋ).

[8] Words beginning with upsilon or an initial-upsilon diphthong always have a rough breathing mark, except in the case of the name of the letter itself. This may reflect the loss of an initial /s/ sound at times (compare Gk “hyper” and “hypo” to Latin “super” and “sub”)

[9] The pre-Koine Greek alphabet had sampi (ͳ/ϡ; value = 900) after omega. Compare to Hebrew sin/shin: שׂ/שׁ.

Obsolete or Alternate Letter Forms not Found in the NT

Based on a discussion in the comments, I put together this chart of Greek letters excluded from the alphabet by the time of the development of Koine Greek. As indicated in the original chart above, three of these letters survived as numbers. I used the Character Map accessory in Microsoft Windows. I’m not sure if all of these will show up on your computer; it may depend on your version of windows and your language settings.

The Unicode and Microsoft Word Alt-X numbers are identical. If you’re not familiar with the Alt-X feature, simply type the four-digit hex code in a Word document and press the Alt and x keys at the same time. It automatically converts the code to the letter. If you find that you cannot view the letters on your computer, click the “Email” button and drop me a note. I would be happy to send you a copy of the Word file of this chart.

Character Map Name (Provenance)	Capital	Miniscule	Unicode/Alt-X Capital	Unicode/Alt-X Miniscule
Digamma	Ϝ	ϝ	03DC	03DD
Digamma (Pamphylian)	Ͷ	ͷ	0376	0377
Stigma	Ϛ	ϛ	03DA	03DB
Heta	Ͱ	ͱ	0370	0371
Iota (“turned”; not used in printed Greek NT)		℩		2129
Yot	Ϳ^[*]	ϳ^[^†^]	037F	03F3
San	Ϻ	ϻ	03FA	03FB
Koppa (Archaic)	Ϙ	ϙ	03D8	03D9
Koppa	Ϟ	ϟ	03DE	03DF
Sampi (Archaic)	Ͳ	ͳ	0372	0373
Sampi	Ϡ	ϡ	03E0	03E1
Sho	Ϸ	ϸ	03F7	03F8

[*] Identified as “Undefined” but placed in capital column since it appears to be a capital. I am basing this on the comment received below from “AZ.”

[†] Simply identified as “Greek Letter Yot,” which is how all the other capital letters are identified. However, it appears to be a miniscule, so I’ll place it in this column.

Comments (28)

28 Comments »

after Omega is Sampi and Sho

Comment by AZ — August 10, 2023 @ 12:23 pm | Reply
- Thank you. I do have footnotes indicating the obsolete letters digamma, qoppa, and sampi. In all my Greek studies and reading (and I do read outside of the biblical oeuvre) I have never encountered any references to sho. Is that an aspirated form of sampi (/sh/)? I don’t even think it shows up in any keyboard sets.
  
  Comment by Scott Stocking — August 10, 2023 @ 12:33 pm | Reply
- there are more archaic letters, eight in total:
  
  digamma, stigma, heta, yot, san, koppa, sampi, sho
  
  Comment by AZ — March 25, 2025 @ 1:35 pm | Reply
  - Hi, AZ, thank you for reading and for your feedback. I do have footnotes about three of the obsolete letters (digamma, k/qoppa, and sampi) that survived into the Koine era as numerals. According to my sources, the “stigma” (BAG-D Greek Lexicon) is another name for the digamma, both of which are also called “vau” (BAG-D & Mounce’s Morphology of Biblical Greek). All three versions of that letter are identified as appearing between the epsilon (ε 5th letter) and zeta (ζ 7th letter) of the Greek alphabet and thus carry the value of 6. (A quick search of Wikipedia indicates the “stigma” character was used instead of the digamma for the number 6, but then again, it’s Wikipedia, and I don’t trust it at all.) Because my training was focused in biblical (koine) Greek, I was not aware of the other letter names you mentioned, although I’m assuming the “yot” you mention is the consonantal iota (same letter as the vowel but with an undercaret), which is perhaps a cognate to the English “y” (sometimes consonant, sometimes vowel). I do know the influence of the consonantal iota appears to have passed through Greek into English (hypocrite, hypocrisy).
    
    Just curious: I noticed the views on this page spiked around the time you left this comment. Were you going back and forth referring to it, or were you in a classroom setting where others were referring to it as well? I always appreciate feedback if someone is using my posts for more than personal use.
    
    Scott Stocking
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — March 25, 2025 @ 5:21 pm
  - It is Unicode, who contains full 32 letter Greek alphabet, inside ALLKEYS.TXT file on its server. After applying of *GREEK*LETTER* wildcard complete alphabet goes as follows:
    
    Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Digamma Stigma Zeta Heta Eta Theta Iota Yot Kappa Lamda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi San Koppa Rho Sigma Tau Upsilon Phi Chi Psi Omega Sampi Sho
    
    Comment by AZ — March 26, 2025 @ 3:08 am
  - Fascinating! I was not aware of that. The values I have assigned in my chart are the historic values used in ancient texts. Thank you!
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — March 26, 2025 @ 4:35 am
  - All 32 Greek letters in Unicode are full glyphs, ALWAYS without diacritics. Variants inside *GREEK*LETTER* wildcard for ALLKEYS.TXT include:
    
    digamma – pamphylian digamma
    
    archaic koppa – koppa
    
    archaic sampi – sampi
    
    only lowercase:
    
    turned iota
    
    final sigma
    
    Comment by AZ — March 27, 2025 @ 4:51 am
  - I assume this is something for coders? I don’t really do much coding other than what WP’s rich text editor does automatically with my Windows fonts (Greek, Hebrew) I can install. Is this a separate product available for purchase?
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — March 27, 2025 @ 5:44 am
  - Official Unicode PDF named U0370.pdf uses official Antinoou font and shows all *GREEK*LETTER* wildcard glyphs for 32 letter Greek alphabet.
    
    Of course *GREEK*SYMBOL* and *COPTIC*LETTER* wildcards are to be treated as out of scope. Antinoou font is at evertype . com /fonts / coptic
    
    Diacritized letterforms are too out of scope.
    
    Comment by AZ — March 27, 2025 @ 6:04 am
  - WordPress does not allow to write actual Greek letters in comments, so I give ASCII approximations of their alphabetic uppercase archaic shapes:
    
    digamma F
    
    stigma S
    
    heta Ⱶ
    
    yot J
    
    san M
    
    koppa Q
    
    sampi T
    
    sho Þ
    
    Comment by AZ — March 31, 2025 @ 3:59 am
  - I’m adding a chart in the main article of these letters as they are programmed into the Character Map feature of Windows. I’m not sure what OS you use, so I can’t guarantee you will be able to view all of these letters accurately. I hope this assists with further communications you may make about these letters.
    Scott
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — March 31, 2025 @ 5:11 pm
  - Greek Capital Letter Yot shows correctly on my screen, along with Greek Small Letter Yot, both are correctly displayed in correct columns – I use ANTINOOU font freely available from here: evertype.com/fonts/coptic
    
    correct alphabetical sub-collation for these letters in table with obsolete letters is:
    
    Digamma, Digamma Pamphylian, Stigma, Heta, Yot, San, Koppa Archaic, Koppa, Sampi Archaic, Sampi, Sho
    
    according to *GREEK*LETTER* wildcard from unicode.org/Public/UCA/latest/allkeys.txt
    
    Unicode Alt-X ordering is NOT alphabetical.
    
    Comment by AZ — April 1, 2025 @ 5:38 am
  - Thank you. I will reorder the table accordingly.
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — April 1, 2025 @ 5:53 am
  - Classical Greek Alphabet Table misses Turned Greek Small Letter Iota analogous to Final Sigma. Alt-X for Turned Iota is: 2129. Archaic words beginning with Yot do exist, they are: ϳηπαρ, ϳυμη, etc…
    
    Comment by AZ — April 1, 2025 @ 6:25 am
  - I did see the turned iota in Unicode. Again, I really do appreciate what I’m learning in this exchange.
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — April 1, 2025 @ 6:43 am
  - “undefined” ID in Character Map is nothing but reaction of older version of Windows to recent Unicode newcomers
    
    Comment by AZ — April 1, 2025 @ 6:30 am
Since final sigma already is in 24 letter subset of 32 letters, turned iota too should be in 24 letter subset of 32 letters. It is not obsolete letter bearing non-classic name, but variant of classic iota.

Comment by AZ — April 1, 2025 @ 1:13 pm | Reply
- I appreciate that. Since the turned iota isn’t used in the Greek NT (Koine Greek), I’ll just add a footnote to that effect. I don’t suspect it’s used in the Septuagint either, but there’s no way I can examine every extant text. It’s not relevant to biblical studies as far as I know.
  
  Comment by Scott Stocking — April 1, 2025 @ 1:47 pm | Reply
- Final sigma too is medieval development, so it too should be placed in table with obsolete letters as well. Septuagint originally was written only in uppercase text of course. Alt-X for final sigma is: 03C2
  
  Comment by AZ — April 1, 2025 @ 2:01 pm | Reply
  - Miniscules in general did not come into common use until about the 9th Century as they made hand-copying texts easier, per Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament (p. 9ff). My primary milieu is the printed text of the New Testament, as that is what most of my audience has available to them. I do appreciate getting into the weeds like this, though, and I myself have researched images of handwritten copies of extant NT fragments in Greek and Latin when studying textual variants. A few years ago, I was in Ireland and got to go to the Chester Beatty Library to see the biblical Greek and Hebrew texts they had on display. That was the highlight of my professional career simply to be in the presence of that history. Scott
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — April 1, 2025 @ 2:43 pm
  - Full 32 letter Greek Alphabet:
    
    Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Digamma Stigma Zeta Heta Eta Theta Iota Yot Kappa Lamda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi San Koppa Rho Sigma Tau Upsilon Phi Chi Psi Omega Sampi Sho
    
    etymologically already contains full 22 letter Hebrew Alphabet as its subset.
    
    Comment by AZ — April 1, 2025 @ 3:04 pm
  - Yep, I recognized the connection between the Hebrew and Greek alphabets when I first started studying biblical languages 40 years ago. I also took a course in Aramaic as well.
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — April 1, 2025 @ 3:41 pm
  - regarding footnotes saying: The pre-Koine Greek alphabet had…
    
    this one about koppa should show both modern and archaic koppa: Ϟ/Ϙ
    
    instead of paired modern lowercase
    
    this one about sampi should show both modern and archaic sampi: Ϡ/Ͳ
    
    instead of singled modern uppercase
    
    Comment by AZ — April 2, 2025 @ 4:40 am
  - Thank you. I think it’s displaying differently on my phone than on my laptop, so I may have to redo that with the current Unicode set.
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — April 2, 2025 @ 5:00 am
  - Near value 90 and near value 900 there should be redone both Ϟ/Ϙ and Ϡ/Ͳ by copypasting from here, because previous koppas and sampis have misidentified codepoints thanks to misprogrammed fonts in obsolete Windows XP.
    
    Comment by AZ — April 2, 2025 @ 10:29 am
  - Did the alternate forms have the values as well? Thank you.
    
    Comment by Scott Stocking — April 2, 2025 @ 5:24 pm
  - Numeric values exceptionlessly can be used with ALL 32 Greek letters, thus obviously:
    
    digamma, pamphylian digamma, stigma: 6
    
    heta, eta: 8
    
    iota, yot: 10
    
    san, koppa, archaic koppa: 90
    
    sampi, archaic sampi, sho: 900
    
    Comment by AZ — April 3, 2025 @ 8:57 am
  - From ALPHA to SAN, greek and hebrew numeric values are identical.
    
    Comment by AZ — April 3, 2025 @ 9:02 am

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