Of all the 26 letters in our alphabet, probably the most intriguing is X.
It can mean “times” (as in 2 x 2 = 4), and it can mean “by” (as in “Hand me that 2 x 4, will ya’?”). It can label the horizontal axis on a graph. It can stand for a human chromosome (XX or XY). It marks the spot on the treasure map. And it even signifies the adult content rating of a movie.
So of course I started wondering about the origin of this enigmatic letter. What I found out is that X probably got its start with the Phoenician letter “samekh,” which meant “fish” and represented the hard S sound. It was later borrowed by the Greeks, who named it “chi.”
“Chi” happens to be the first letter of “Christos,” which means “Christ,” and is the reason that Xmas is short for Christmas.
X was then borrowed by the Romans who used it not only as the letter X but also to identify the numeral X (“10”).
The X also has a lot of other uses — so many in fact that it’s been referred to as a phonetic chameleon. It can establish the “ks” sound as in “wax” and “fox,” or it can sound like “gz” as in “auxiliary” and “exhaust.” It can sound like a “z” as it does in “xylophone” and “Xanadu,” and it can be pronounced like a hard “k” as in the word “excite.” It can have a “ksh” sound as in “luxury,” and it can choose to remain silent as it does when it shows up in “Sioux Falls” and “faux.”
Our versatile friend also tends to be used frequently in medical terms and abbreviations.
Just as it stands for an unknown in math, the X in “x-ray” serves the same function, probably because the workings of Wilhelm Röntgen’s 1895 discovery were so mysterious at the time.
In the area of medical abbreviations, it is believed that the letters “Rx” came to stand for “prescription” simply because it’s a shortening of the Latin word “recipere” (to take).
Some other medical shortenings that use the lowercase version of X are: “Hx” (history), “Sx” (symptoms) and “Dx” (diagnosis).
And then there are the dozens of medication brand names that start with X, including these double-X brands: Xopenex, Xifaxan, Xiaflex and Xolox.
The letter X has seen myriad other uses as well, such as being appropriated by activist Malcolm X to replace his slave name, and in the entertainment business for franchises like X Factor and X-Men. It’s prominent in the name of the X-Acto hobby knife and even represents the double X trademark of Dos Equis beer (which means “two X’s in Spanish).
Maybe the X’s versatility is the reason that billionaire Elon Musk has taken to fancying it so much. In 1999 he started an online bank named X.com (which quickly merged with its competitor Conformity to become PayPal). Recently he bought Twitter and promptly changed its name to X. In between those two ventures, he founded SpaceX and introduced a Tesla SUV model called X.
Musk even named his son “X Æ A-12” (or “X” for short, but was forced to change the baby’s name to “X AE A-XII” because California law requires that names on birth certificates be spelled “using the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language”).
But Musk is hardly the first one to take an interest in the power of the symmetrical letter. Jack Hancock, senior brand strategy manager for creative consultancy Lippincott, notes that back in 1960 his company encouraged Haloid Xerox Company to drop “Haloid” from its name saying that “Xerox” alone was sufficient because the letter X gives a sense of speed and impact to it.
And it seems that there’s a keen interest in X even in words that merely include it somewhere in their spelling – just look at the names of companies like FedEx and Expedia, for example. “Someone should create an Excel spreadsheet to expound upon all the examples,” joked Hancock. “You could call it the X-Files.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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