reish

Reish is a transliteration variant that may refer to several topics, primarily in Hebrew-language contexts and in personal names. It most commonly denotes the Hebrew letter resh, the 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter represents the consonant sound /r/ and has a numerical value of 200 in gematria. In written Hebrew, resh does not have a special final form, and in transliteration the name is rendered in several spellings, including reish and resh, reflecting different linguistic traditions and historical usage in Yiddish and Latin-script texts.

Reish also appears as a surname in some Jewish and German-speaking communities. As a family name, its spelling and pronunciation can vary with language and region, and related forms such as Resch or Reisch may occur in different populations. The etymology of the surname is not uniform across families and can be linked to the letter-name tradition or to Germanic occupational or toponymic origins, among other possibilities.

In academic and linguistic contexts, reish may be used as an alternate transliteration of resh when discussing Hebrew orthography, phonology, or etymology. Because the term can refer to multiple distinct concepts depending on context, readers should consider the surrounding information to determine which sense of reish is intended.