T-Z

The letter Z is the twenty-sixth and the last letter in the Latin Alphabet. more...

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In almost all dialects of English other than American English, the letter is named zed /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below). Other European languages use a similar form, e.g. the French zède, German tset, Spanish, Catalan and Italian zeta, and Dutch zet. The American English form zee /ziː/ derives from an English late 17th-century dialectal form, now obsolete in England (the letter rhymes with "V" in the "Alphabet song" nursery rhyme). Another English dialectal form is izzard, which dates from the mid 18th-century, probably deriving from French et zède meaning and z, or else from s hard.

History

The name of the Semitic symbol was zayin, possibly meaning "weapon", and was the seventh letter. It represented either /z/ as in English and French, or possibly more like /dz/ (as in Italian zeta, zero).

The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the Phoenician symbol I, and the Greek inscriptional form remained in this shape throughout ancient times. The Greeks called it Zeta, a new name made in imitation of Eta (η) and Theta (θ).

In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems to have represented /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have been either /zd/ or a /dz/, and in fact there is no consensus concerning this issue. In other dialects, as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and unvoiced th (IPA /ð/ and /θ/, respectively). In the common dialect (κοινη) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became /z/), as it remains in modern Greek.

In Etruscan, Z may have symbolized /ts/; in Latin, /dz/. In early Latin, the sound of /z/ developed into /r/ and the symbol became useless. It was therefore removed from the alphabet around 300 BC by the Censor, Appius Claudius Caecus, and a new letter, G was put in its place soon thereafter.

Read more at Wikipedia.org