Why Do We Use the Letter “X” for the Unknown?

In particular, x, which we first encountered in mathematics in elementary school, was not representative of something previously unknown to us. Later X-ray, Malcolm X started to appear in many terms.

without making you worry too much let’s go on x’s journey to being unknown. But after reading the article, it is very possible that you will look at the letter x as two lines extending to infinity rather than a letter!

The symbolism of the letter X is “search and invention”.

as in the letter X meeting of two lines at one point or the letter x consisting of arrows pointing to a single point from all directions, east, west, north and south, represents the ‘search and invention’ in our lives.

To understand the unknown defined as X, we have almost We need to go back 2000 years. At that time, the Islamic world, which hosted many scientific studies, trained scholars who contributed to the development of modern science. Since the works of these people were in Arabic, many scientific terms today have their origins in Arabic.

The expression “al-algebra”, which means “the reconciliation of independent parts”, has also passed into the western language as “algebra”.

Khwarizmi, who lived in the 9th century and was one of the founders of modern mathematics, laid the foundations of mathematics with his studies on Classical Greek, Indian and Egyptian sources while working at the Information Council in Baghdad in 832. It had such an impact that for centuries, mathematics was symbolically known in Europe as “al-Khwarizmi” mathematics. The first letter of his name is difficult to pronounce in European languages. It has become “al-Gwarizmi”. Today, this term is used as an “algorithm”.

The interest in the works of Islamic scholars who came to Spain and Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries caused these works to be translated into Spanish immediately.

Some letters that did not have a Spanish equivalent in Arabic made translation difficult. one of them letter shīn.

There is no letter in Spanish that makes the “ş” sound. The letter S is also the first letter of the word “seylan”, which means “something”. As a solution to this, they used the Greek letter χ, which is pronounced “çi” in Greek for “shi” and is represented by a sign similar to the Latin x. Of course, there was another prediction as well. According to this, the word frequently encountered in Greek texts is They used the conjunction ϗ, which is read as “kai” (και) and means “and”. Although there is no definitive proof, it is said that the symbol çi and the conjunction “kai” used by the Spaniards for the unknown gave way to the letter “x” in Latin over time.

But for some, it’s not about the pronunciation, it’s about the meaning of the word.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offered a theory on this topic. According to the theory, European scholars The Arabic “thing” translates to Greek “xei” and they began to abbreviate it as X only over time. There is also the Greek word “xenos” meaning “unknown”.

So in short, English words are just Even though 0.15% of them have the letter x, because the Spaniards cannot pronounce the letter “ş” We have identified X with the unknown.