Ze is derived from the
Greek letter Zeta (Ζ ζ). In the
Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was (
zemlja), meaning "earth". The shape of the letter originally looked similar to a Greek letter
Ζ or Latin letter
Z with a tail on the bottom (). Though a majuscule form of this variant () is encoded in Unicode, historically it was only used as caseless or lowercase. In the
Cyrillic numeral system, Zemlja had a value of 7. Medieval Cyrillic manuscripts and Church Slavonic printed books have two variant forms of the letter Zemlja: з and . Only the form was used in the oldest
ustav (
uncial) writing style; з appeared in the later poluustav (
half-uncial) manuscripts and typescripts, where the two variants are found at proportions of about 1:1. Some early grammars tried to give a phonetic distinction to these forms (like palatalized vs. nonpalatalized sound), but the system had no further development.
Ukrainian scribes and typographers began to regularly use З/з in an initial position, and otherwise (a system in use till the end of the 19th century).
Russian scribes and typographers largely abandoned the widespread use of the variant in favor of з in the wake of
Patriarch Nikon's reforms. They still used the older form mostly in the case of two З's in row: (the system in use till the mid-18th century). The
civil (Petrine) script knows only one shape of the letter: З/з. This shape is therefore confusing with the number 3, given that the two shapes are very similar to it. However, shapes similar to Z/z can be used in certain stylish typefaces. In calligraphy and in general handwritten text, lowercase з can be written either fully over the baseline (similar to the printed form) or with the lower half under the baseline and with the loop (for the Russian language, a standard shape since the middle of the 20th century). ==Usage==