Greek Letters and Their Names

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Greek Letters and Their Names

When you are working with geometry and trigonometry, you will see a lot of Greek letters. It will be helpful to know how the names of these letters are spelled and pronounced.

Name	Character	Pronunciation
alpha	α	AL-phuh
beta	β	BAY-tuh
gamma	γ	GAMM-muh
delta	δ	DELL-tuh
epsilon	ε	EPP-sih-lonn
zeta	ζ	ZAY-tuh
eta	η	AY-tuh
theta	θ	THAY-tuh
iota	ι	ee-OH-tuh
kappa	κ	CAPP-uh
lambda	λ	LAMM-duh (What animal is that? It's a "LAMB -- duh"!!)
mu	μ	myoo
nu	ν	noo
xi	ξ	ksee
omicron	ο	OH-mih-kronn
pi	π	piy (Like apple "pie".)
rho	ρ	roh (Like "row, row, row your boat".)
(final) sigma	ς	SIGG-muh
sigma	σ	SIGG-muh
tau	τ	tow (like the first syllable of "towel")
upsilon	υ	OOPS-ih-lonn
phi	φ	fiy (Like "fee, fie, fo, fum")
chi	χ	kiy
psi	ψ	psiy
omega	ω	oh-MAY-guh

The Greek letters you are most likely to see for angles are α (alpha), β (beta), γ (gamma), δ (delta), and θ (theta). And of course you'll be using π (pi) all the time. Make sure you know how to spell and pronounce at least these six Greek characters. Copyright © Elizabeth Stapel 2010-2011 All Rights Reserved

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Cite this article as:

Stapel, Elizabeth. "Greek Letters and Their Names." Purplemath. Available from
https://www.purplemath.com/modules/grklttrs.htm. Accessed

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