San (letter) San (letter) San (Ϻ) was an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. Its shape was similar to modern M, or ϡ, or to a modern Greek Sigma (Σ) turned sideways, and it was used as an alternative to Sigma to denote the sound . Unlike Sigma, whose position in the alphabet is between Rho and Tau, San appeared between Pi and Qoppa in alphabetic order. In addition to denoting this separate archaic character, the name "San" was also used as an alternative name to denote the standard letter Sigma. The existence of the two competing letters Sigma and San is
Ancient Greek phonology short , which had a closer pronunciation: . Conversely, Sanskrit short was transcribed with Greek . The Greek alphabet developed from the older Phoenician alphabet. It may be assumed that the Greeks tended to assign to each Phoenician letter that Greek sound which most closely resembled the Phoenician sound. But, as with loanwords, the interpretation is not straightforward. The Greek alphabet was in turn the basis of other alphabets, notably the Etruscan and Coptic and later the Armenian, Gothic, and Cyrillic. Similar arguments can be derived in these cases as in the Phoenician-Greek case. For example, in Cyrillic, the letter