# Greek alphabet

#### jpanhalt

##### Well-Known Member
Latex shows 28 characters for the lower case Greek alphabet. Accepting that there are two forms for lower case sigma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet). What are the other characters?

Also, in uppercase, the order is alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon... (as we learned in school). However, in the lower case listing, the order is alpha, beta, chi, delta, epsilon... Why?

John

##### Banned
The Greek alphabet goes back 2400 years or so in it's classical form, and before that it's roots are broader. You can't expect exhaustive detailed reference on letter systems for essentially dead languages.

Language evolves over time, it is not a static thing.

#### jpanhalt

##### Well-Known Member
The history of the Greek alphabet and evolution of language was not my point.

I was talking about current day usage in the Latex editor. Why should the uppercase letters in any alphabet be ordered differently than the equivalent lowercase letters? What are the names for the additional lowercase Greek letters?

John

#### duffy

##### Well-Known Member
I expect the ordering you saw was done as an english-alphabet command ordering, which would put the "c" between "b" and "d".
Not all greek characters are available. Here's the ones that are:

\alpha \beta \gamma \delta \epsilon \varepsilon
[LATEX]\alpha \beta \gamma \delta \epsilon \varepsilon[/LATEX]

\zeta \eta \theta \vartheta \iota \kappa
[LATEX]\zeta \eta \theta \vartheta \iota \kappa[/LATEX]

\lambda \mu \nu \xi \pi \varpi \rho \varrho \sigma \varsigma
[LATEX] \lambda \mu \nu \xi \pi \varpi \rho \varrho \sigma \varsigma [/LATEX]

\tau \upsilon \phi \varphi \chi \psi \omega
[LATEX] \tau \upsilon \phi \varphi \chi \psi \omega [/LATEX]

\Gamma \Delta \Theta \Lambda \Xi
[LATEX]\Gamma \Delta \Theta \Lambda \Xi [/LATEX]

\Pi \Sigma \Upsilon \Phi \Psi \Omega
[LATEX]\Pi \Sigma \Upsilon \Phi \Psi \Omega[/LATEX]

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#### jpanhalt

##### Well-Known Member
Thanks, Duffy.

I had not seen vartheta and varpi nor the term"varxx." The other varxx are close enough to the non-variants that if I had seen them in isolation, I would have guessed what they were. In fact, I usually wrote phi as varphi when working problems and didn't realize it was considered a variant character. It was just a quicker way to write it.

I guess the uppercase characters were ordered by a different program than was used for the lowercase ones.

John

#### instagreek

##### New Member
I think this the correct ordering..
Names

Alpha

Beta

Gamma

Delta

Epsilon

Zeta

Eta

Theta

Iota

Kappa

Lambda

Mu

Nu

Xi

Omicron

Pi

Rho

Sigma

Tau

Upsilon

Phi

Chi

Psi

Omega

Symbol

α

β

γ

δ

ε

ζ

η

θ

ι

κ

λ

μ

ν

ξ

ο

π

ρ

σ

τ

υ

φ

χ

ψ

ω

Latex

\alpha

\beta

\gamma

\delta

\epsilon

\zeta

\eta

\theta

\iota

\kappa

\lambda

\mu

\nu

\xi

ο

\pi

\rho

\sigma

\tau

\upsilon

\phi

\chi

\psi

\omega

Source:

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