Heta Ͱ
Heta is a conventional name for the historical Greek alphabet letter Eta (Η) and several of its variants, when used in their original function of denoting the consonant /h/. The letter Η had been adopted by Greek from the Phoenician letter Heth (
) originally with this consonantal sound value, and Hēta was its original name. The Italic alphabets, and ultimately Latin, adopted the letter H from this Greek usage. However, Greek dialects progressively lost the sound /h/ from their phonological systems. In the Ionic dialects, where this loss of /h/ happened early, the name of the letter naturally changed to Ēta, and the letter was subsequently turned to a new use denoting the long half-open /ɛː/ sound. In this function it later entered the classical orthography adopted across the whole of Greece.