Well, we’ve been wrestling with it all week – how to say “omicron”, the name given by the World Health Organization to the latest COVID “variant of concern“. The Word Nerd is here to tell you your options, as well as why the WHO chose this particular Greek letter.
Pronunciation of omicron
According to Merriam-Webster, omicron is the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet and can be pronounced one of two ways. Either ah-macron (which is supposedly the American pronunciation) or “oh-macron” which is supposedly the British. If you’d like to hear it for yourself, check out this You Tube video:
I think the British version sounds more fancy and refined, so I’m going with that, and leading with an “oh” sound. (I’m also the girl who has her SIRI voice set to a British man who I like to refer to as Watson, so take that into account.) The look of the letter is nothing special – your basic o.
Why is this variant named omicron?
The other thing I’ve been wondering is why the WHO chose omicron. As new variants have emerged, the WHO has worked its way through the Greek alphabet, starting with alpha and moving down the list. However, after Mu, the next two letters are Nu and Xi. According to the New York Times, WHO officials thought that Nu would be too easily confused with “new” and “Xi” is a common name in many countries and could create problems. For example, the top leader of China is Xi Jinping. So, they skipped to omicron.
What we know about omicron
We don’t know much yet except that the omicron variant is here and spreading. As of Dec 2, 2021, two cases have been found in the US and cases have also been found in several European countries and Australia. And of course South Africa. Scientists will need some time and data before they can make definitive statements. In the meantime, you can read about what is currently known in this NYT article, “Omicron: What Is Known — and Still Unknown“, posted Dec 2, 2021.
How do you choose to pronounce omicron, and how do you keep up to date on the science of COVID? I like to listen to podcasts like The Daily and read articles from reliable sources, however, as the media tends to emphasize negative news, I’m trying to keep myself informed without getting sucked into too much pessimistic reporting.
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
Funny you should bring up the pronunciation of omicron. As one who studied for the ministry, I was required to take 2 years of Koine Greek (the form of Greek used to write the New Testament.) “Koine” is Greek for “common” and is the root for such Greek words as the one translated “fellowship” in English Bibles, for a fellowship is a group of people who have something in common. In the first century, even though Rome was the dominant political power, Greek, not Latin, was the language of commerce throughout the civilized (like English, today). But it varied somewhat from Classical Greek, so it was named Koine Greek – common Greek.
Greek has much the same vowel sounds as we do, but for the letter’s e and o, there were two versions signifying the long and short versions of those vowels. “Epsilon” and “eta” were the short and long versions of “e,” respectively with epsilon sounding like our short e and, in stylized print looks like a backwards “3”. “Eta” is the long “e” but sounds like our long “a.” The “e” at the end of “koine” is an “eta” so the word is pronounced, “koin-ay.”
The Greek for “o” also has two versions, omicron and omega. Omicron is the short “o” and omega the long “o.” Omicron looks like our “o” in both upper and lower case forms, but omega looks like “Ω” in upper case and “ω” in lower case. You would think that would settle the case as to whether omicron is to be pronounced as long or short, but it does not. Experts in Koine Greek disagree as to how omicron is to be pronounced. All agree that omega sounds like our long “o.” But some believe that both Greek o’s were pronounced the same while others say that omicron is pronounced like our short o.
In my college, there were two professors of Greek. Each taught both years of Greek, so whatever professor you had for first year Greek also taught you second year Greek. The two professors disagreed on how to pronounce omicron. Since learning the alphabet was the first thing one did when learning Greek, a student’s opinion of the “proper” way to say omicron was established early on. And, as is typical of men in college age, virtually any issue can become a point of contention and heated debate. Add to this the natural tendency of respect and loyalty to your professor, the “ah-mi-crahn”/oh-mi-crohn” debate was no small matter among those taking the class. (BTW, there was no such thing as “oh-mi-crahn.” Both o’s in omicron had to be long or both be short.”
I was a second-year Greek student in my senior year. My roommate was a first year Greek student. My professor was the “ah-mi-crahn” guy, his was the “oh-mi-crohn” guy. My roommate and I got along well, but as someone 2 years his senior, I did like to pester him from time to time. So, sometimes when I would walk into the room, I would simply say, “”ah-mi-crahn”, and such was his somewhat over-serious personality, that he would always take the bait, and snap back with the seriousness of one debating a serious issue of law, “oh-mi-crohn!”
However, we do not live in the first century, so maybe our best bet would be to contact someone in modern Greece and ask, “How do you pronounce the 15th letter of your alphabet? LOL!
After I wrote the above comment, I did a little more research on omicron and omega and discovered something I was actually surprised I had not seen before. The names of the letters omicron and omega mean, quite literally, little-o and big-o. O-micron and O-mega. That has nothing to do with lower or upper case. In fact, I do not know how they got those names, but that is what their names mean. Just another bit of more or less useless information I love to knwo about! LOL.
Very interesting! Thank you!