Did Eureka lose its H?

Question

Archimedes famously proclaimed Eureka, I have found it, but should the word itself proclaim I have lost my H?

According to wiktionary and wikipedia, Eureka simply comes from the greek εὕρηκα, perfect active indicative of εὑρίσκω, to find. While εὑρίσκω led to words such as heuristics with an h, εὕρηκα was transliterated without the h. Can we claim that writing Eureka is actually not correct, and should have an H?

I vaguely remember that the the "accent" on εὕ suggests that the transliteration of the word should start with a h (as for heuristics) to convey the aspirated sound, but this is just a vague memory and I could not find a more precise discussion on this.

Edit: I should have added that this is not specific to English, the wiktionary mentions that the version without H is also found in French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, whiloe Czech, Slovak and Hungarian use the H, portuguese apparently being the only one with the two versions.

Answer 1

Indeed, the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα would be transcribed heurēka, with an H. The mark that looks like an apostrophe (the "rough breathing" or "spiritus asper") indicates the H sound.

However, the word came to English through Latin, which is why it's pronounced with the accent on the second syllable instead of the first (as in Greek). And the letter H was rather unstable in Latin from Classical times onward, which is why we have an H in words like "hallucinate" (from Latin alucinātus) and no H in words like "arena" (from Latin harēna): later Latin-speakers weren't sure if there was supposed to be an H in those words or not, so variants like hallucinātus and arēna were common.

So it's not too surprising that the H in (h)eureka didn't make it into English. At this point, though, the word has taken on a life of its own in English, and is best known without the H—so I would say it's just as correct as "arena" is (that is, completely correct). It's common for words to change slightly as they're borrowed between languages, and the H in heurēka was just another casualty of this process.

(P.S. Ancient Greek also lost its H sound somewhere in the first few centuries BCE, around the same time Latin did or slightly earlier; Modern Greek speakers now pronounce the word as vríka or évrika.)

Answer 2

just wanted to share some images

1. One of the first attested uses in an English text:

Source: Euclid, Henry Billingsley, John Dee, François De Foix Candale, John Day, and English Printing Collection. The elements of geometrie of the most auncient philosopher Evclide of Megara. Imprinted at London: By Iohn Daye, 1570. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/03020856/.

2. One of the first attested uses in an Italian text:

and in the comments written by Cesare Cesariano, where you can also see a Latinized form, "Eurica":

Source: Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione De architectura Libri Dece traducti de latino in vulgare affigurati: commentati: & con mirando ordine insigniti ... (described as the "First translation into Italian from the Latin with commentary and illustrations, by Cesare Cesariano"), 1521

Note: in educated/standard Italian, it is usually èureka, although Treccani adds "/'ɛureka/, più com. ma non corretto /eu'rɛka/."

3. If someone could find it in the first (?) German translation, I'd really appreciate it (feel free to add the relevant image in my post):

"Vitruvius Teutsch nembliuchen des allern namhafftigsten und hocherfarnesten römischen architecti und kunstereichen werck oder bawmeisters, Marci Vitruvij Pollionis zehen bucher von der architectur und künstleichen bawen" (described in the Met catalog as "Translated and edited by Gualther Hermenius Rivius (German, ca. 1500–after 1545)" 1548