AYIN a’ yin (עַ֫יִנ֒, H6524, eye, fountain). 1. The sixteenth letter of the Heb. alphabet named for the shape of the letter which resembles the picture of an eye. This letter also represents the g (gayin), a hard ^cayin, which was retained in Arab. and now is attested in the Ugaritic alphabet. It appears in the LXX rendering of the hard ’ayin as a gamma (g), and in such proper names as Gomorrah and Gaza which both begin with an ^cayin which originally was a gayin (sounds like a gutteral rg). English also bears witness to this difference in that we borrow our word “gauze” from the fact that a thin fabric in medieval times called “gauze” was exported from Gaza.

2. A city named Ayin-Rimmon appears in Joshua 15:32; 1 Chronicles 4:32. These are usually read as two names, but they prob. belong together as one word and often are read as Ain-rimmon or En-rimmon.

Bibliography E. Horowitz, How the Hebrew Language Grew (1961), 103, 104.