It looks beautiful but is actually dangerous. How was the name of the new coronavirus created?

Delta has not yet left, and a new variant of the new coronavirus has been discovered in South Africa, and this new variant has a large number of mutations.

The World Health Organization issued a statement saying that the new strain of the new coronavirus B.1.1.529 discovered in South Africa is a variant worthy of attention. Many experts described this variant virus as "very scary" and may be the most ferocious variant virus discovered so far and the worst variant they have ever seen, with the degree of mutation exceeding expectations.

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It could significantly reduce the effectiveness of vaccines and increase the risk of repeated infection. Europe, the United States and other places that are still experiencing severe epidemics immediately announced travel restrictions on southern African countries.

The strain is named after the Greek letter Omicron and marked as "O".

"Delta", "Lambda", "Omicron"... How were the names of the new coronavirus created?

They are all named after Greek letters. Behind these seemingly beautiful names are actually the repeated mutations and upgrades of the virus.

How is the new coronavirus named?

There is more than one way to name a virus. Based on sequencing analysis or evolutionary processes, there are at least four ways to classify or name the new coronavirus:

PANGOLIN method, which can be divided into 6 types (A, B, B.1, B.1.1, B.1.177, B.1.1.7);

Nextstrain can be divided into 13 types (19A–B, 20A–20J and 21A);

GISAID is divided into 8 types (S, O, L, V, G, GH, GR, and GV);

The UK public health agency uses the specific time of discovery of the mutant virus strain to classify it, year, month, and day [YYYY] [MM]/[NN], preceded by a prefix of the type to which it belongs. Now this classification method has been changed to year-month (using the first three letters of English)-day, such as VOI-2021-07-08, which means the mutant strain of interest was discovered on July 8, 2021.

There is also a habit of people naming the virus after the country or region where the variant was first discovered. However, since July 2021, the WHO no longer names the virus strains after the country or region where the variant was first discovered in order to avoid misreporting or stigmatizing the country that first discovered the variant. Therefore, the new coronavirus variants are renamed using Greek letters.

The first four "variants of concern" were named in chronological order: Alpha discovered in the UK, Beta discovered in South Africa, Gamma discovered in Brazil, and Delta discovered in India.

Then six "variants of concern" were listed, named with the next six letters after Delta. When new variants are discovered in the future, they will continue to be referred to by Greek letters in order.

There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, and Ο is the 15th letter, which means that since the World Health Organization decided to name the new coronavirus after a Greek letter, more than half of the alphabet has been used.

Why do people love to use Greek letters?

Greek letters are widely used because they are simple and clear and not easily ambiguous during communication.

For example, using Greek letters to name hurricanes. In 2020, hurricanes frequently hit the Atlantic Ocean, and the 21 hurricane names provided by the World Meteorological Organization have all been used up. Meteorologists with great imaginations temporarily "recruited" Greek letters to name the 22nd hurricane and subsequent hurricanes that year. As a result, "Tropical Storm Beta" began to appear in weather forecasts.

In addition, the most common Greek letters appear in various formulas in mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and other subjects. Each letter usually represents a constant, function, or a specific variable. The most familiar one is the Greek letter π, which represents pi.

Some people have asked whether the 24 Greek letters will be insufficient as the new coronavirus variants evolve. Regarding this issue, the World Health Organization has said that it will consider naming the new coronavirus variants after constellations.

The world's earliest alphabet with vowels

The Greek alphabet is the earliest alphabet with vowels in the world. It originated from the Phoenician alphabet, which was formed by the alphabetization of pictograms. The Phoenician alphabet only had consonants, but the Greek language had developed vowels, so the Greeks added vowel letters.

At the same time, because the Greeks used wax tablets as their writing tools, sometimes after writing the previous line from right to left, they would write from left to right, becoming the so-called "plowland" style of writing. Later, it gradually evolved into writing entirely from left to right, and the direction of the letters was also reversed. Therefore, the shape of Greek letters looks particularly different.

Later, the Romans introduced the Greek alphabet and slightly changed it into the Latin alphabet, which became popular in the world.

Therefore, it is easy for people to confuse Greek, Roman and Latin letters. The Cyrillic alphabet also evolved from the Greek alphabet, and Russian, Ukrainian and other languages ​​are derived from the Cyrillic and Georgian alphabets, so people who have learned Russian will feel familiar when using the Greek alphabet.

English and Greek letters also have a deep connection. The English word "alphabet" comes from the popular Latin word "alphabetum", and "alphabetum" comes from Greek.

Attached is the complete 24-letter Greek alphabet:

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This article is compiled from Beijing News Foreign Affairs, Science and Technology Innovation Bayu, Rizhao Daily, etc.

Source: Tadpole Musical Notation

Editor: Xiaoxi Tushuo