The Greek alphabet arrived on the global stage and into everyday lexicon riding on waves of the novel coronavirus as the World Health Organization began naming variants in the Glagolitic script.

As the variants mutated, from Alpha to Delta and then Omicron, people began taking note of the 24 Greek letters. Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. Omega is the last.

In June, an expert committee led by a working group of the World Health Organization announced they would be using the Greek alphabet to name the variants.

B次元官网网址淭hese will be easier to remember and more practical to use than alphanumerical designations,B次元官网网址� said the paper.

B次元官网网址淭he Greek alphabet is well established as being generic, as the names of its individual letters have already been used for a multitude of purposes.B次元官网网址�

Mark Pallen, one of the authors of the paper, said the scientific method of using letters and numbers was cumbersome and confusing. Most people resorted to using the name of the place where the variant was first discovered, creating a stigma for that country, he noted.

B次元官网网址淎nd so, there was a recognition that something easier and snappy was needed.B次元官网网址�

Soon after, the World Health Organization decided to use Greek letters.

It was a B次元官网网址渂it of an oversight,B次元官网网址� he said in an interview, that nobody asked permission from the Greeks.

B次元官网网址淎nd we fell into the mistake, which is quite a common mistake,B次元官网网址� said Pallen, a professor of microbial genomics at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. B次元官网网址淲hen people talk about the Greeks, they often mean the ancient Greeks, and they forget that the Greeks still exist as a nation.B次元官网网址�

But it seems the Greeks shrugged off the association of their language to the variants with classic stoicism.

Panayiotis Pappas, chair of linguistics at Simon Fraser University who uses nonbinary pronouns, said the B次元官网网址渢ruth is that itB次元官网网址檚 unremarkableB次元官网网址� to any Greek that the letters are used to name deadly variants.

And itB次元官网网址檚 not just the letters, as B次元官网网址渟o manyB次元官网网址� Greek words are used in science, Pappas said in an interview.

The linguistics professor reads Greek newspapers and scoured them for reaction to the letters being used to name the variants.

B次元官网网址淭here are lots of other deadly diseases that have Greek names, and we donB次元官网网址檛 complain about that.B次元官网网址�

Pappas grew up in northern Greece on a small island called Thasos before moving to the United States for their education and then taking a job at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

B次元官网网址淕reeks donB次元官网网址檛 even care if the words get mispronounced or anything like that,B次元官网网址� Pappas said.

B次元官网网址淭heyB次元官网网址檝e always considered it as a mark of pride that, you know, we have a civilization thatB次元官网网址檚 about 3,000 years old and that weB次元官网网址檙e able to contribute to Western science.B次元官网网址�

Tom Archibald, a mathematics professor at Simon Fraser University, studied Greek in high school in Ontario for three years. His knowledge of modern Greek is B次元官网网址減retty badB次元官网网址�, he said, but he can read it with the aid of a dictionary.

B次元官网网址淚 mean, every working mathematician basically knows the Greek alphabet, even if they canB次元官网网址檛 say it in order.B次元官网网址�

Pappas said the use of the Greek alphabet to name variants has led to more interest in linguistic courses.

B次元官网网址淭he one thing that we have seen a bit of an increase in linguistics in our courses, which explain language origins and word origins, what we call the science of etymology, as more students are interested in the health sciences fields, where a lot of the background of the English word is either Greek or Latin,B次元官网网址� the professor said.

B次元官网网址淲e offer courses that go through those explanations, and those have seen quite a bit of a rise in popularity. People donB次元官网网址檛 want to learn the language, per se, but they do want to understand where these words come from.B次元官网网址�

B次元官网网址擧ina Alam, The Canadian Press