X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex or ecks (),"X" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ex," op. cit. plural exes. History The consonant cluster was, in Ancient Greek, written as either Chi ? (Western Greek) or Xi ? (Eastern Greek). In the end, Chi was standardized as ( in Modern Greek), while Xi was standardized for . But the Etruscans had taken over ? from older Western Greek; therefore, it stood for in Etruscan and Latin. It is unknown whether the letters Chi and Xi are Greek inventions, or whether they are ultimately of Semitic origin. Chi was placed toward the end of the Greek alphabet, after the Semitic