Heta

archaic letter of the Greek alphabet

Heta (uppercase/lowercase Ⱶ ⱶ) is another name for the letter Eta (Η), a letter of the Greek alphabet, and also for some other variant forms of it. This name is used to show that this letter at first was pronounced as "h", just like in Latin. Later, in the Ionian dialect of Greek, people stopped pronouncing the sound "h", and therefore they gave the letter a new meaning and used it for a long "e" sound instead. Some other dialects then took over this new letter "Eta", and so they had to find a new form for the letter for "h". In some dialects they invented a new letter "" to stand for "h". Today, the name "Heta" is also used for this letter.