Greek Capital Letter San

Greek Capital Letter San at U+03FA is an archaic Greek capital letter used to represent the old letter san, a predecessor or regional alternative to sigma in some early Greek alphabets. It belongs to the Greek and Coptic block and is mainly important for accurately encoding ancient inscriptions, scholarly editions, and discussions of early Greek writing systems. In real use, it appears most often in classics, epigraphy, archaeology, and historical linguistics. Scholars use it when transcribing inscriptions from regions such as Corinth, Crete, and parts of the Peloponnese where san was used for an s sound instead of, or alongside, sigma; a published inscription may preserve Ϻ to show the original letter form rather than normalizing it to Σ. It also turns up in alphabet charts, paleography tables, and Unicode or font documentation that compare local Greek alphabets and their letter shapes. Outside specialist material it is uncommon, and modern Greek does not use it as a living letter. Because its shape can resemble a Latin capital M in some styles, the surrounding scholarly context is usually essential for recognizing it as san rather than an ordinary m-like letter.