Tau gallicum
Latin letter d with short stroke overlay (Ꟈ/ꟈ)
Tau gallicum, or D with short stroke overlay in Unicode, (majuscule: Ꟈ (), minuscule: ꟈ ()) is a letter that was used by the Gauls in their language. It is a D with the horizontal bar from the Greek letter theta (Θ). It likely represented a /t͡s/ or /st/ sound, like the ts in cats or the st in stop, though gemination is seldom present, such as in the Chamalières tablet.
Name
The Latin phrase tau gallicum means "Gallic tau", referring to the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. The only known mention of the letter is found in Catalepton, a set of epigrams attributed to Virgil and collected after his death in Appendix Vergiliana. The second epigram contains the following text:
It is not known, however, whether the sound described by Virgil is the same as that for which the term is currently used.
Letter
After using the Greek alphabet, the Gauls transcribed their language using the Latin alphabet. However, to note a sound unknown to it, they introduced the additional letter tau gallicum, said to have been inspired by the Greek letter Θ (theta). Its spelling varies between ⟨Ꟈ⟩ and ⟨ꟉꟉ⟩.
The letter can be found in the initial of the name of the Celtic goddess Sirona, whose name is written as: Sirona, Ꟈirona or Thirona, highlighting the difficulty of noting the initial sound in the Latin alphabet.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tau gallicum” is latin letter d with short stroke overlay (Ꟈ/ꟈ). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through gallicum, Latin and letter, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “latin letter d with short stroke overlay (Ꟈ/ꟈ)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16679130. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Tau gallicum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.