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What is the name of the symbol we use for empty set? Difference in notation of phi and void set? I found that symbols that we use for both are different but I know the name phi only. Not know the name of symbol of empty ser

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2 Answers

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According to Wikipedia André Weil (and maybe others) introduced the symbol $\emptyset$ for the empty set. They were inspired by the letter Ø in the Norwegian and Danish alphabet. So, I guess you could argue that the symbol should be pronounced as it is pronounced in these alphabets.

In my experience most mathematicians just call the symbol "empty set".

Note also, that the Wikipedia article says that the symbol is not to be confused with the Greek letter $\phi$ or $\Phi$.

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Although not mathematics, I thought I would add that in the APL programming language the empty vector is represented by the symbol ⍬, which is pronounced "zilde".

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