I work at a large urban university. Our academic buildings are surrounded by rowhouses and brownstones bearing the signatures of the fraternities and sororities housed within. Once, while out taking a lunchtime stroll, I found myself walking behind a couple who was visiting the campus. “What fraternity is that?” said the woman, pausing in front of a corner building. “Oh that’s uh…” and here the man paused to gaze upon the Greek letters, before confidently replying, “Zeta Eta Nu.” Both satisfied by this answer, the couple resumed their walk.
The building they had paused in front of was the house of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
I have to admit, I reluctantly admired the certainty with which that man had delivered such a spectacularly wrong answer.
Could you have identified that fraternity more accurately? Take today’s Pop Quiz to test your Greek knowledge!
QUESTION: What are the names of these Greek characters? (given in both upper- and lower-case here)
- Γγ
- Ππ
- Λλ
- Ψψ
- Ωω
- Ββ
- Μμ
- Ζζ
- Σσ
- Θθ
Bonus: Here is a picture of me gaping at an important artifact. One of the scripts on this stone is Greek. What are the other two?
ANSWERS: (for reference, look here)
- Gamma
- Pi
- Lambda
- Psi
- Omega
- Beta
- Mu
- Zeta
- Sigma
- Theta
Bonus: That artifact is the Rosetta Stone. The three scripts on the stone are Greek, demotic Egyptian, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. I wrote about my pilgrimage to the British Museum here!
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How did you do? If you’ve never studied ancient Greek, how did you know as much as you did?
Copyright Allison Taylor-Adams. See About for details.
polyglossic 
I only missed Psi.
I never studied ancient Greek, but the sciences use enough Greek letters for various values, so between a Computer Science degree (micro-everything and lambda expressions), most of a Mathematics degree (pi everywhere, sigma representing summations), and a recent interest in Physics (alpha/beta/gamma particles), I’ve had my fair share.
And I’m sure I must have seen one or two of them during my Linguistics degree. *:^)
Oh, and admittedly, had you not provided both upper- and lower-case versions, I’d have fared worse…
Oh yes, I was thinking of scientific notation but had forgotten that math also uses Greek characters so much.
Upper- vs. lower-case is tricky even for Greek students! You learn to read in sort of an English style, with long texts of lower-case letters, and then you see a real inscription somewhere that’s all capitals and no spaces between words and you feel like you’re back to square one.
In my fifth quarter of ancient Greek, I feel like I’m cheating on this quiz. The only thing I don’t know about the Greek alphabet is how to recite it backwards. My girlfriend learned when she was rushing a sorority and teased me about the fact. I don’t think there’s a single classics department in the country that would impose such a requirement on its students.
The Rosetta Stone is cheating for me too, since I live two blocks away from a museum that has a two-foot replica.
I’ll be honest, after four semesters of Greek I do know all the names of the letters, but I’ll be darned if I can ever remember where chi and psi come in the order of the lexicon!