Ihs

This monogram is built by using the first three uncial (capital) letters of Jesus' name as it is written in Greek. It was overlooked that the second letter was a Greek eta, not a Latin H. (The monogram is also sometimes found as IH or IHV.) This explains why it has occasionally been incorrectly expanded to “Ihesus.” There have been several other attempts to explain the etymology of this abbreviation. A popular theory regards each of the letters in the IHS monogram as the first letter of separate words instead of the first three letters in the Greek term for Jesus. Among others, the letters have been held to refer to Iesus Hominum Salvator (“Jesus, Savior of Men”) or Iesum Habemus Socium (“We have Jesus as our companion”).