Ι (Yota)

She survived tetanus (‘τέτανος’ in Greek, ‘tetanos’ in Turkish) before I got her into my flat. From the sound of ‘teta’, I was reminded of the letter ‘theta’ (θ) in the Greek alphabet by a Turkish friend. I considered the letter after ‘theta’, which is ‘iota’ (ι), as a potential name for her since she survived through the disease. Since ‘iota’ is not that easy for Turkish people to pronounce, I named her ‘Yota’. I later learned from a Greek friend that Giota (Γιώτα, pronounced /ˈʝo.ta/) is also a female name in Greek, the diminutive of Panagiota (Παναγιώτα). Apparently, the letter is borrowed from Phoenician yodh (𐤉), reconstructed in Proto-Semitic as *yad- ‘hand’.¹ So, this is the story.