Nun is believed to be derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of fish in water as its origin. The Phoenician letter was named nūn "fish", but the glyph has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite naḥš "snake", based on the name in Ethiopic, ultimately from a hieroglyph representing a snake, I10 . Naḥs in modern Arabic literally means "bad luck". The cognate letter in Ge'ez and descended Semitic languages of Ethiopia is nehas, which also means "brass".
Hebrew Nun
Hebrew spelling: נוּן
Pronunciation
Nun represents an alveolar nasal,, like the English letter N.
In gematria, Nun represents the number 50. Its final form represents 700 but this is rarely used, Tav and Shin being used instead. As in Arabic, nun as an abbreviation can stand for neqevah, feminine. In medieval Rabbinic writings, Nun Sophit stood for "Son of". Nun is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown when written in a Sefer Torah. See Tag, Shin, Ayin, Teth, Gimmel, Zayin, and Tzadi. In the game of dreidel, a rolled Nun passes play to the next player with no other action.
Arabic nūn
The letter is named nūn, and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word: Some examples on its uses in Modern Standard Arabic: Nūn is used as a suffix indicating present-tense plural feminine nouns; for example هِيَ تَكْتُب hiya taktub becomes هُنَّ تَكْتَبْنَ hunna taktabna. Nūn is also used as the prefix for first-person plural imperfective/present tense verbs. Thus هُوَ يَكْتُب huwwa yaktub → نَحْنُ نَكْتُب naḥnu naktub.
Punjabi/Saraiki nūn
It is retroflex nasal consonantal sound symbol, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n`. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of an en. It is similar to, the letter for the palatal nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the left stem, and to, the letter for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem. Saraiki uses the letter ⟨ݨ⟩ for. It is a compound of nūn and rre. For example:
After the fall of Mosul, ISIL demanded Assyrian Christians in the city to convert to Islam, pay tribute, or face execution. ISIL begun marking homes of Christian residents with the letter nūn for Nassarah. Thousands of Christians, Yazidis and other, mostly Shi'a, Muslims, as well as any Muslim whose allegiance was to their home country abandoned their homes and land. In response to the persecution of Christians and Yazidis by ISIL, an international social media campaign was launched to raise global awareness of the plight of religious minorities in Mosul, making use of the letter ن —the mark that ISIL troops spray painted on properties owned by Christians. Some Christians changed their profile pictures on Facebook and Twitter to pictures of the letter ن as a symbol of support. The letter ن, in relation to this social media campaign, is being called the "Mark of the Nazarene" from naṣrānī, a normative Arabic term disparagingly used by ISIL to brand Christians. The word naṣārā/nosrim designates Christians in both Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew. The more common term used to refer to Christians in Modern Standard Arabic is masihi.
