“Consider the letter X . . . which comes from an Egyptian hieroglyph. As a rotated cross it acts, arguably, on our collective unconscious. It is what Jung called an archetype—symbols that are embedded in the collective unconscious of our species. The X was originally a pictograph and thus a symbol associated primarily with priests. It became an alphabet character later—every alphabet character, in fact, was born as a pictograph. The first alphabetic system emerged in the Middle East around 1000 BCE, and was then transported by the Phoenicians (a people from a territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, located largely in modern-day Lebanon) to Greece. It contained signs for consonant sounds only. When it reached Greece, signs for vowel sounds were added to it, making the Greek system the first full-fledged alphabetic one. . . .

In a fascinating book titled Sign after the X (2000), Marina Roy has traced the history of this sign, showing that it has had very little to do with phonetics at any period of its history. Here are a few of its traditional meanings:

• any unknown or unnamed factor, thing, or person
• the signature of any illiterate person
• the sign for mistake
• cancellation
• the unknown, especially in mathematics
• the multiplication symbol
• the Roman numeral ten
• a mechanical defect
• on a map a location
• choice on a ballot
• a motion-picture rating
• a symbol for Christ
• the symbol for a kiss
• the symbol for Chronos, the Greek god of Time
• the symbol for planet Saturn in Greek and Roman mythology.

Today, it stands for youth culture (Generation X), adventure comic heroes (X-Men), and erotic movies (X-rated).”

—Marcel Danesi, Brands, 2006.