What do the letters "IHS" stand for?

[Andruschak]

Some have the mistaken idea that the early Christians spoke English, and that IHS means “In His Service”.

WHAT!!! You mean the King James Version is a translation?:crying:

 

[G_S]

SPQR = Senatus Populusque Romanus

The Senate and the Roman People

 

[Cavaille-Coll]

How about “SPOR”? That is one of the abbreviations (as best I can tell) on the cross in the church in my parish. It’s below a basin and vase/pitcher and appears to me to be a reminder of Jesus’ washing of his Apostles’ feet.

This is the standard means by which mushrooms reproduce.

 

[jbuck919]

Actually they are not from the latin alphabet. Those are upper case Greek Letters. They just look like latin alphabet letters cus they have the same shape.

Just like X (eks) looks like X (chi) and P (pe) looks like P (pi) . They look different as lower calse letters.

IHSOYS is Jesus in upper case greek. In greek as in latin the IHS would stay fixed and the endings would change to indicate the part of speach (subject, direct object, object of preposition, indirect object, etc)

There is no Greek letter that resembles the Latin “S” in form. You can actually see a sigma in some iconographic representations. And what appears to be P is rho, pronounced like “r.” "Pi’ is represented even in its capital form by the tradtitional Greek letter representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.