What’s Up With the Weird Kid Names?

You have have noticed that we refer to kids using weird names.  We don’t have a bunch of kids in our family with such strange (to the Western ear) names: we’re identifying them using Greek letter names in order to protect their privacy.

We generally choose the Greek equivalent of the first letter of their names, so Alpha’s real name starts with ‘A’, Eta’s real name starts with ‘H’, Mu’s name starts with ‘M’, etc.

We recycle the letters a bit; for instance we have multiple kids in our circle of friends and family who’s name starts with ‘M’ (Mu) and so long as they’re not referenced on the same page we just reuse the same letter-name.  We hope that the context makes it clear.

If you’re a close friend or family member you’ll frequently know who we’re talking about.  If you’ve just stumbled across this blog then you don’t need to worry about it.  We’ll try to be as consistent as possible.

For reference, here’s a list of Greek letters and their Roman alphabet equivalents:

Uppercase GreekLowercase GreekNameLatin Equivalent
ΑαAlphaa
ΒβBetab
ΓγGammag
ΔδDeltad
ΕεEpsilone
ΖζZetaz
ΗηEtah
ΘθThetath
ΙιIotai
ΚκKappak
ΛλLambdal
ΜμMum
ΝνNun
ΞξXix
ΟοOmicrono
ΠπPip
ΡρRhor
Σσ,ς *Sigmas
ΤτTaut
ΥυUpsilonu
ΦφPhiph
ΧχChich
ΨψPsips
ΩωOmegao
  • second lower case sigma letter is used in word final position

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