Time to settle the Great Omicron Question. First, there is no word omikron (and no c) in ancient Greek. Second, the classical Greek (5th-4th centuries BC) name for omicron was an accented ou. In the 2nd century AD it was replaced by the name o mikron (‘little/short o’), when Greece was under Roman rule.
So how did Greeks pronounce o mikron? The little o was pronounced short, as in ‘lot’. The letter i (iôta, whence our ‘jot’) was pronounced either long (as in ‘purine’) or short (as in ‘tin’). In the case of mikron, it was pronounced long. The r was lightly trilled. Finally, the last o was stressed. So o mikron was pronounced ‘o meekrrón’.
So much for replicating ancient Greek. But our language is English, and in English ‘o’ can be pronounced short ‘o’ or ‘uh’, or long ‘oh’.
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