Talk:Xi (letter)

Xi, the VLSI story
Anyone know what Xi has to do with Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) or circuit design? It looks like a language for VLSI design. Fill this in if you know.

Origin of name Xi
How did the name xi originate?? Georgia guy 22:31, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Because... uh... it stands for the sound [ks]? If you're looking for a deeper meaning than that, you're going to be disappointed. Though actually, it's a vaguely sensible question, as xi (unlike, say, alpha, beta, gamma, delta (letter)...) isn't named for the Phonecian letter it came from, probably because the Phonecian samekh represents a different sound, namely [s]. It's also probably because it was a slightly later development. 69.140.12.199 00:04, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, sigma got its name from samekh. So why did the Greeks make this letter out of samekh and sigma out of shin?? Georgia guy 01:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
 * short answer: nobody knows. "The problem of the sibilants is created by the existence of too many s sounds in Phoenician and too few in Greek" (Barry Powell, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, 46). See Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece p. 32, for one hypothesis (Phoenician Samekh and Shin got mixed up with each other so that the Greeks called &Xi; "kshi(n)" and &Sigma; "Samekh", and also coincidentally they mixed up Tsade and Zayin). -leigh (&#966;&#952;&#8057;&#947;&#947;&#959;&#962;) 02:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the Greek borrowing of zayin is zeta, which was a new name made in imitation of eta and theta, not a name that indicates it was mixed-up with another letter. Georgia guy 23:11, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Try this article. (Over nine years later, but an answer is better than none, right?) Double sharp (talk) 09:46, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Xi does not come from Samekh, as noted above Sigma is the correlate to Samekh, in fact the lowercase Sigma σ resembles the hebrew samekh in use today ס. Xi is likely related to Chet, phonetic drift is predictable there and also the Phoenician Chet resembles the greek uppercase Xi Ξ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heth — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.58.171.88 (talk) 22:11, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Can someone please add a sound clip of the 'proper' greek pronunciation, as a (native) english speaker i find this very hard to pronounce from ksi.
 * You also don't wit the differense between i and I. The letter|staffr csi in Latin is csee in English.  Forget the Thewdish k, which should be ah aspirant. -lysdexia 21:19, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll add my name to the list of anglophones hoping for a sound clip. --WanderingHermit 01:08, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Two points:
 * the pronounciation guide is (presumably) IPA. I can follow it, but it may be better to have a link in the article.
 * currently there's a note about "US English speakers". I am rewording this to de-emphasise their importance. I assume that "American English speakers" is intended, so I will change this.
 * —DIV (128.250.204.118 (talk) 07:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC))

Could we change the guide on pronunciation to include clear indications of the system being used as a guide (for example "IPA:/kʰai/ like the English "kite"). The phonetic English transcriptions are particularly confusing without examples. 58.240.105.189 (talk) 13:09, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The pronunciation in IPA is like the words "ox eel", run into one word and with the "o" and "l" missed off. I'm not convinced by the stated "usual" English pronunciation of (like "sigh"), which is exactly the same as the "usual" pronunciation for psi quoted in that article. Working in mathematics, I've only ever heard it pronounced as (like "ox eye" run together and without the "o"), with psi being pronounced either  or. Dricherby (talk) 11:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The simple answer is to say the word "kicks" (the ball), and then just not say the "ki" part. ResultingConstant (talk) 21:48, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I am going to change the stated 'usual' English pronunciation to. is the usual English pronunciation of Psi. We cant be probagating misinformation about how things are pronounced. and X is NEVER pronounced as S in English anyway, so that pronunciation for this letter doesn't even remotely make sense! (unlike the Z pronunciation, though I've never heard this letter pronounced this way). we learned the the pronunciation as /ksi/ ('ksee') in school..but Phi Chi and Psi were the 'usual' /fai/ /chai/ /sai/. Firejuggler86 (talk) 08:50, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Layout problem in Opera
I'm viewing this article in Opera in Linux, and the "The lower-case letter ξ is used as a symbol for..." section overlaps the "A joined variant of Ξ." image. I've tried several things to get this to stop, but haven't had success. –Justin Force 15:42, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm using Opera in Windows and I'm not having that problem. It might not be an Opera issue, or it could be your Opera settings.

ξ・∀・）
ξ・∀・） —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.231.17.161 (talk) 20:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Get out of here, Marupo! No one wants your Touhou memes in Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.84.89.90 (talk) 02:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

ξ☢ ﾟ ヮﾟ） 96.231.55.180 (talk) 02:42, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Move
So someone moved the page without a discussion. I think it should be (letter) since that is what Xi is. I tried to move it, but it said an administrator needs to. Any thoughts? Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 03:21, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

equivalence sign
I guess that character is missing from my font. —Tamfang (talk) 02:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Damping ratio
I've previously removed the damping ratio (factor) usage for this letter - but it's come back. I can't find any reference where this quantity is not represented by the letter zeta. These letters can look similar, so it may be just a mistake. Unless some reference can be found for this, I shall re-remove it at some point. --catslash (talk) 10:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I was just googling -Xi damping ratio- and found this talk page and just wanted to share, I've had a professor that uses Xi for damping ratio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.146.11 (talk) 17:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Capitalization?
Is it proper to capitalize names of letters of alphabets? (Is it "Xi" or is it "xi"?) Robert K S (talk) 17:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Development of glyph
The origins of the letter need to be covered. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 16:10, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Jeffdgr8, 20 October 2010
Please change "" to "" as this should be the proper pronunciation in English. The pronunciation as it is now is for the letter Psi. Source: English pronunciation of Greek letters.

Jeffdgr8 (talk) 22:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. The current pronunciation is how it is in the dictionary. Thanks, Stickee (talk)  01:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The source referenced within English pronunciation of Greek letters that states otherwise is http://wwwexe.inf.ufsc.br/~arthur/material_didatico/AlfabetoGrego.pdf. Also http://www.webtopos.gr/eng/languages/greek/alphabet/chart1.htm. In any case the two pages do not agree.

Jeffdgr8 (talk) 17:13, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Not done: Those two sources shouldn't be used for English pronunciation; one is in Portuguese and comes from a user directory of a Brazilian university(?) and the other concerns the Greek pronunciation. An English dictionary is a better source for the pronunciation in English. Celestra (talk) 16:42, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, the second link gives both Greek and English pronunciation for each letter. But as you say, it's not really a good source. — Eru·tuon 20:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Mapppum, 2 October 2011
There is a use of lowercase xi not in the list, which is the Wadsworth Constant. This is a popular meme created by Reddit users which has already grown to widespread use. It was created on this thread.

Mapppum (talk) 03:18, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: No. Stop trying every means possible to get this non-notable idea into Wikipedia.  After it's written up in a newspaper article or academic journal, come back and see us again. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Add Greek Name
Most of the other greek letters have a section like "(uppercase Η, lowercase η; Greek: Ήτα Ēta)". It would be nice to have similar one here including the Greek name for the letter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maliberty (talk • contribs) 18:07, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Alternative stylization with vertical bar
In modern Greece, xi is often written with a vertical bar down the middle from top to bottom, so perhaps that should be mentioned in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.139.51.6 (talk) 20:57, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * By the way, the Ξ glyph has a vertical bar in the Trebuchet MS font. Siealex (talk) 19:08, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

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I originally wanted to add “Not to be confused with 三, the Chinese character for 3." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.78.56.189 (talk) 00:49, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Bad math?
The article says " In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 60". when I follow the link to that article (Greek numerals), it does not show this. Additionally, I know that XI equals eleven, does the lower case "i" make a difference? And if we are linking the other article, shouldn't we make sure that the other article also backs up what is being claimed here? As far as I can tell, it does not.  Despayre  tête-à-tête 17:39, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Greek numerals shows this. XI in the Roman numeral system are two characters, together representing eleven. Just plain Bill (talk) 19:22, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It would have been more precise if it used the Greek orthography, rather than the English name for the letter. The table shows variously, $\overline{ξ}$ and Ξʹ as being used to represent 60 in the system of Greek numerals. —DIV (49.195.177.247 (talk) 11:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC))

Pronunciation revisionism?
A lot of TV presenters have been referring to this letter with the same pronunciation as the President of China's surname. I wouldn't put much stock in that, as I'd never heard anyone pronouncing Greek letter Xi as she (or similar) prior to the last month or so. But could this Greek academic actually be correct? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-02/why-we-hear-about-some-covid-19-variants-more-than-others/13658624 —DIV (49.195.177.247 (talk) 11:19, 13 December 2021 (UTC))