Posted on 05/02/2024 9:11:59 AM PDT by edwinland
X is for...
In 1895, the physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, a groundbreaking moment in medical history which would lead to myriad improvements to people’s health. Perhaps one overlooked benefit though was in relation to mental health, specifically of those tasked with making alphabet books. How did they represent the letter X before X-rays? Xylophones, which have also been a popular choice through the twentieth century to today, are mysteriously absent in older works. Perhaps explained by the fact that, although around for millennia, the instrument didn't gain popularity in the West (with the name of “xylophone”) until the early twentieth century. So to what solutions did our industrious publishers turn?
As we see below, in addition to drawing on names — be it historical figures, plants, or animals, all mostly of a Greek bent (X being there much more common) — there's also some more inventive approaches. And some wonderfully lazy ones too.
Xerxes, Xantippe, and more...
As a figure of note, you might hope it would be your epic accomplishments that would lead to your name being uttered by students for millennia to come — not for the coincidence of the tricky letter with which your name began. But so it was for the Persian king Xerxes, who in the field of nineteenth-century alphabet books achieved what he could never quite achieve in fifth-century-BC Athens: domination. Though there was perhaps some solace in that he was likely the very first historical figure of which many a child would learn.
(Excerpt) Read more at publicdomainreview.org ...
Xerxes is the Greek rendition of the Persian king's name (quite different from the original).
would post a clip of the “I’m Gonna Play My Xylophone” guy from The Gong Show, but can’t find (and that fake weirdo on youtube does’t count).
That was fun. Even taking into consideration the inevitable changes in cultural references from one generation to the next, previous generations were much more influenced by classical education than is ours. The average schoolboy of, say, the early 1800’s had a much more broad exposure to histories of ancient Greece and Rome (not to mention the Bible) than does today’s average graduate student.
Surprised the Catholic book went for Xistus and not Xavier.
I've always thought that Xanthippe got a bad rap. She put up with the old goat for longer than I would...
Why even have a letter ‘X’ at all? It’s usually pronounced as a ‘Z’ anyways.
Xenophobe...................
That verse about Xerxes at the link appears in the Bumper Book from 1946 which I read as a child. I have a pristine copy sealed in Mylar. Latest estimate puts its worth at about $300 dollars. I paid $40 for it some years ago. I think I’ll let it age some more.
Back then it was how many people signed their names.
For a while the Nation of Islam had people replace their “slave name” (surname) with X, hence Malcolm X (no relation to Pius X). Somehow they did not foresee having two members with the same first name.
I usually never get past “’C’ is for cookie”
In math, ‘X’ is an unknown...................
Awesome article! From a time when literacy was valued.
There’s no X in Twitter.
I’d rather try to figure out what to do w/an absence of “X” words in my dictionary than try to sort a chinese one.
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