Ƶ (minuscule: ƶ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from Z with the addition of a stroke through the center.
Ƶ is used in the Latin version of the Karachay-Balkar alphabet to represent palatalization, with ь as the Cyrillic equivalent.
Ƶ was used in the Jaꞑalif alphabet (part of Uniform Turkic Alphabet) for the Tatar language in the first half of the 20th-century to represent a voiced postalveolar fricative pronounced as /link/, now written j.
Ƶ was used in the 1992 Latin Chechen spelling as voiced postalveolar fricative pronounced as /link/. It was also used in a 1931 variant of the Karelian alphabet for the Tver dialect.
The 1931–1941 Mongolian Latin alphabet used Ƶ to represent in Mongolian pronounced as /d͡ʒ/.
It is used in Unifon, being the last letter representing the voiced alveolar fricative /z/.
It was also used in the Latin script for the Abkhaz language representing the voiced retroflex fricative.
It is sometimes used as the form for the standard Z to distinguish it from the numeral 2.
The Ƶ character is similar to the vertical form of the Wolfsangel (or "wolf trap") heraldic charge from medieval Germany and eastern France.
The German: Wolfsangel symbol was an early 15th-century symbol of Germanic liberty and freedom that also appears as a mason's mark and was also used as a German medieval forestry boundary marker.[1] The German: Wolfsangel symbol uses the reversed (mostly, but not exclusively) Ƶ character in both horizontal and vertical forms, and in heraldry, the vertical form is associated with a German: Donnerkeil (or "thunderbolt").[2]
In World War 2, the Wolfsangel symbol was appropriated into Nazi symbolism by both military and non-military groups and now remains listed as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League database.[1] [3] In 2020, a trend started of Generation Z users of TikTok tattooing a "Generation Ƶ" symbol on their arm as "a symbol of unity in our generation but also as a sign of rebellion" (in the manner of the 15th-century Germanic peasant's revolts), however, the originator of the trend renounced it when the appropriation of the symbol by the Nazis was brought to her attention.[4]
Far-right movements in Ukraine like the former Social-National Assembly and the Azov Battalion have used a 90-degree rotated Ƶ symbol with an elongated center stroke for the political slogan Ukrainian: Ідея Нації (Ukrainian for "National Idea", where the symbol is a composite of the "N" and the "I"); they deny any connection with Nazism, or with the Wolfsangel symbol.[5] [6]
Many people often use Ƶ as a handwritten variant of Z and z, especially with mathematicians, scientists, and engineers to avoid confusion with the numeral 2. [7] [8]
In Polish, the character Ƶ is used as an allographic variant of the letter Ż although once used in Old Polish.
In Greek, the character Ƶ is a handwritten form of the letter Xi (ξ), where the horizontal stroke distinguishes it from Zeta, ζ.
Ƶ was sometimes used instead of Z to represent the zaire, a former currency of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In video games, Ƶ has been used as a fictional currency symbol, particularly in Japanese games where it can stand for zeni (a Japanese word for money). The Dragon Ball franchise, as well as Capcom games, use Ƶ in this way. It can also be found in the games EVE Online and , where it stands for, respectively, the "Interstellar Kredit" (ISK) and the "Osean Zollar".
A 45-degree rotated Ƶ forms the basis of the Gibor rune, which is a pseudo-rune (i.e. not an actual ancient rune) invented in 1902 by the 19th-century Austrian mysticist and Germanic revivalist Guido von List, and features prominently in modern runic writing.
The Unicode standard specifies two codepoints:
