Twitter's symbolic rebranding: What the XXXX does ‘X’ mean?

The 24th letter of the alphabet?

The Roman numeral for 10?

An algebraic variable?

Something X-rated, or a kiss at the end of a text?

That letter that keeps Mulder and Scully so busy?

Unless you’ve just woken from a coma (we envy you right now), you’ll have heard that Twitter owner Elon Musk’s latest decision in a long line of controversial ones was ditching the company’s iconic blue bird logo in favour of a far more ominous X.

But what does this rebranding mean and is it a smart move, when taking into consideration X's symbolic weight?

Musk has always been fascinated with the letter X.

This dates back to when he tried to name his second company X.com, which became PayPal. He finally got his way when he launched the Model X, one of electric car company Tesla's earliest models, founded SpaceX (even if the ‘X’ was relegated to a suffix) and launched his artificial-intelligence app xAI.

Most tellingly of all though, he named his youngest child X Æ A-12 - or “X” for short.

So this week’s rebrand couldn’t have come as too much of a shock considering his prior form. He even formally changed Twitter's legal name to X Corp in April, and now, anyone who goes to X.com will get redirected to Twitter.com. Though according to Musk, the primary domain for the service will eventually be X.com.

This past week was only about making the aesthetic official, staking his claim to his beloved X brand. He's not alone, as evidenced by UK’s TV channel ITV's rebranding of their on-demand service to ITVX. They even made light of the situation:

Love it, loathe it, see it as another mark in Twitter's ongoing decline, X is rather appropriate as a new logo, as the letter is in tune with Musk's ambition, which he had put on the record, to turn Twitter into “the