Jochen asks
What's the matter with the Greek STIGMA as symbol for 6? It looks like the minuscle of SIGMA and should be developed from the ligated SIGMA-TAU.Dr. Buttrey explains (original posting from Moneta-L 14.05.2003):
(1) The digamma was the 6th letter of the archaic
Greek alphabet,
representing our sound "w", and named "wau" (wow!). After it fell
out of speech, and out of the
alphabet, it was named "digamma" by later
generations who didn't know it directly -- the new name describes its
shape, looking like one gamma on top of another. The shape survived and
was taken up into the Latin
alphabet in the same position but with a
different sound (unknown in classical Greek) -- it is our F (same shape,
same position).
The
Greeks did not have a separate system of
symbols to represent
numbers, as we have with our so-called Arabic numerals. Among several
systems they developed alphabetic numeration, which I believe is not
attested before the 3rd cent. BC. Anyhow the digamma (F), no longer used
in written Greek, was retained for the number 6. (In the same way the
qoppa, which
had been abandoned because kappa served perfectly well, was
retained for numeration, in its original position in the
alphabet, as it
is in ours, between P and R; and represented the number 90.)
Even in
antiquity the digamma was taking on a cursive form, which came
to look somthing like a square C with a little tail.
(2) There is no such thing as an ancient numeral stigma. This is an
illusion, based on a modern misunderstanding, and is something that
stillneeds to be
corrected in Unicode. The ancient word "stigma" means a mark,
a scar, a tattoo, and has nothing to do with the digamma or with
numeration.
With the invention of printing in the 15th cent. the new Greek fonts
copied manuscript
hands, and included not just individual letters but all
kinds of fancy
abbreviations and ligatures. One
ligature was the
combination sigma-tau, ST, which got the name of "stigma", I suppose
modelled on "sigma", that is as "sigma" = S, so "stigma" = ST.
Meanwhile the digamma
had gone on being used in alphabetic numeration
for "6", in manuscript Greek, and then in the earliest printed Greek --
and indeed is so used to this day. Unfortunately, a close similarity
developed between the shape of the ST
ligature and that of the developed,
cursive digamma. As a result the name "stigma" came to be
appliedmistakenly to both of them. It is
still so used, or rather misued even
today. For example, alphabetic numeration is found in the paragraphs and
subparagraphs of legislation; and in modern Greek dictionaries under
"stigma" you find one meaning as the number 6.
This is all a misunderstanding that goes back several centuries, and is
now fixed permanently in the language.
What is yet more annoying, the ligatures of the earliest printed Greek
have by now all been resolved into their separate letters, so the
combination once described by the term "stigma" is just printed as regular
sigma tau, and the typographic term "stigma" has gone completely out of
use. Yet the word survives, wrongly, in alphabetic numeration for the
character
still used for "6" -- which is really the
good old wau/digamma
in cursive form, misunderstood.
It survives, I should say, in dictionaries, but not I think in speech.
Hardly any modern Greek alphabetic fonts include a symbol for it. So when
they have to use letters numerically they are as follows: [I can't
provide Greek letters here: imagine them] --
1=A' alpha 2=B' beta 3=G' gamma 4=D' delta 5=E' epsilon
6=ST' "stigma" ...and so on. That is, they mis-name the digamma
"stigma", and then don't have a character to print it, so they print
"sigma tau" instead as an abbreviation. And so pronounce it too: I've
tried it on a modern unversity-educated Greek, who read it off as "sigma
tau", not as "stigma", and actually did not know that term.
Anyhow, the ancient number 6 was represented by wau/digamma, and there's
an end of it. Forget stigma: it didn't exist as a numerical notion;
that's just a relatively modern mistake.
Ted Buttrey