Iks, ikska, or křížek: What will tweets now be called in Czech?

Twitter has now rebranded as X and the blue bird icon has been replaced with a stylized letter. Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the company, now wants people to call posts “x’s” instead of “tweets.” This has sparked a debate over what to call the posts formerly known as tweets in Czech.

People have suggested calling tweets “crosses” which would be “křížky” in Czech. But it is already more common to say it like the letter, so a tweet would in Czech be an “x-ka” or “ikska,” The verb forms would be “iksovat” for “to x” and “iksovování” for “x-ing.”

Some people globally want to combine “x” with “tweet” to make “xeet,” which would come out as “ikseet.” The verb form “to x” would be something like “ikseetovat” and “xeeting” would be “ikseetování.”

Some users embarked on advanced linguistic considerations over the use of the new name. “Twitter is now X. Tweet is now X. Retweeting is X squared. A Twitter user is now xhibitionist. And the overall vibe – xhaustion,” one of them cited by ČTK said.

Musk chose the new name for the company, and it fits in with his other properties such as aerospace company SpaceX, the Tesla Model X, and his new artificial intelligence venture xAI. One of his kids is nicknamed X, short for X Æ A-XII, and the original name of PayPal was X.com, the entertainment magazine Variety reported.

Musk announced on July 22 that the service would be re-branded to “X” and began the transition process. X.com now redirects to Twitter.com and the blue bird has been replaced on the web version but still appears in phone apps. The word “tweet” also still appears throughout the website and apps. Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and since then has introduced several changes to how the company operates.

Linda Yaccarino, the recently appointed CEO of X, explained the new name. “For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started,” she xed.