Eta (letter)

For other uses, see Eta. Eta (uppercase Η, lowercase η) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 8. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Heth . Letters that arose from Eta include the Latin H and the Cyrillic letter И. In Modern Greek the letter represents a Close front unrounded vowel . In Classical Greek, it was pronounced as a long Open-mid front unrounded vowel: . The symbol was initially used to denote the  Voiceless glottal fricative  (later spelled with a rough breathing). It was inherited as such by the Etruscan and Latin alphabets from the Cumaean alphabet in the 8th century BC, and this led to its subsequent universal usage in Western Europe as the letter H.
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