Zhe (Cyrillic)

Zhe (Ж) is the letter of Cyrillic alphabet which represents voiced postalveolar fricative /Z/ (), same sound which is represented by s in the English word "treasure".

Zhe is the 7th letter of the Belarussian, Bulgarian and Russian Cyrillic alphabets, and 8th letter in Macedonian, Serbian and Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabets. In the old Cyrillic alphabet, zhe was the 7th letter. Its name was "живѣте" (zhivěte) - live, and it did not have numerical value.

It is not known how zhe is made. Such a letter does not exist in Greek, Latin or any other alphabet of the time, though there is some similarity with Glagolitic letter "zhivete" () which represents the same sound. However, origin of "zhivete" is not known either.

Zhe is most oftenly transliterated as "zh", rarer as "zx", except in Serbian and Macedonian where it is most oftenly transliterated as "ž", or, lacking diacritics, as "z".

Zhe is one of the first letters learned by children who learn to write in Slavic languages which use it (except in Russian language) because it looks quite like a frog floating in a pond, and in these languages frog is written "жаба".

Code positions

Character encoding	Case	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Octal	Binary
Unicode	Capital	1046	0416	002026	0000010000010110
	Small	1078	0436	002066	0000010000110110
ISO 8859-5;	Capital	182	b6	266	0010110110
	Small	214	d6	326	0011010110
KOI 8;	Capital	246	f6	366	0011110110
	Small	214	d6	326	0011010110
Windows 1251;	Capital	198	c6	306	0011000110
	Small	230	e6	346	0011100110

Its HTML entities are: Ж or Ж for capital and ж or ж for small letter.

See also

Cyrillic alphabet
А A;	Б Be;	В Ve;	Г Ge;	Ѓ Gje;	Ґ Ghe;	Д De;	Ђ Dje;	Е E;	Є Ukranian E;	Ѐ E with grave;	Ё Yo;	Ж Zhe;
Ѕ Dze;	З Ze;	И I;	Й I short;	Ѝ I with grave;	І Ukrainian I;	Ї Yi;	Ј Je;	К Ka;	Ќ Kje;	Ћ Tshe;	Л El;	Љ Lje;
М Em;	Н En;	Њ Nje;	О O;	П Pe;	Р Er;	С Es;	Т Te;	Ѹ Ou;	У U;	Ў U short;	Ф Ef;	Х Ha;
Ѡ Omega Cyrillic;	Ц Tse;	Ч Che;	Џ Dzhe;	Ш Sha;	Щ Shcha;	Ъ Hard sign (yer);	Ы Yery;	Ь Soft sign;	Ѣ Yat;	Э E reversed;	Ю Yu;	Я Ya
(not in Unicode) A iotified	Ѥ E iotified;	Ѧ [[Yus; small]]	Ѫ [[Yus; big]]	Ѩ [[Yus; small iotified]]	Ѭ [[Yus; big iotified]]	Ѯ Ksi Cyrillic;	Ѱ Psi Cyrillic;	Ѳ Fita;	Ѵ Izhitsa;	Ѷ Izhitsa with double grave;

(Russian letters bolded; old letters italics)