Nu (letter) explained

Nu (; uppercase Ν, lowercase ν; Greek, Modern (1453-);: ni in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /ni/) is the thirteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar nasal in Greek, Modern (1453-); pronounced as /n/. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 50. It is derived from the Phoenician nun . Its Latin equivalent is N, though the lowercase (

\nu

) resembles the Roman lowercase v.

The name of the letter is written Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: νῦ in Ancient Greek and traditional Modern Greek polytonic orthography, while in Modern Greek it is written Greek, Modern (1453-);: νι pronounced as /[ni]/.

Letters that arose from nu include Roman N and Cyrillic script En.

Symbology

The lower-case letter is used as a symbol in many academic fields. Uppercase nu is not used, because it appears identical to Latin N.

Character encodings

Greek Nu/Coptic Ni

Encodings of Greek Nu and Coptic Ni.[2]

BBX Mathematical Nu

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.

See also

Notes and References

  1. See e.g. Planck's formula
  2. Unicode Code Charts: Greek and Coptic (Range: 0370-03FF)