Showing revision 4Semitic Šīn (bow) was pronounced as /S/ as the modern English digraph SH. In Greek, there was only one phoneme /s/ and no /S/, so Greek Σιγμα (Sigma) came to represent the Greek /s/ phoneme. The name Sigma probably comes from the Semitic letter Sāmek and not Šīn. In Etruscan and Latin, the /s/ value was maintained, and only in Modern languages, S came to represent other sounds, like /S/ in Hungarian or /z/ in English and French (in English RISE and French LISER 'to read')