Ksi (Cyrillic)

This article is about the Cyrillic letter. For other uses, see KSI (disambiguation).

Ksi (Ѯ, ѯ italics: Ѯ ѯ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, derived from the Greek letter Xi (Ξ, ξ).^[1] It was mainly used in Greek loanwords, especially words relating to the Church.

Ksi
Ѯ ѯ
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Old Church Slavonic
Sound values	[ks]
In Unicode	U+046E, U+046F
Alphabetical position	42
History
Development	𓊽 (possbily) 𐤎 Ξ ξ Ѯ ѯ
Time period	c. 893–1708, 1710–1735
Other
Associated numbers	60 (Cyrillic numerals)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

An example of the use of Ksi after it was formally abolished: a civil census 1782 (GATO, f. 389, cat. 1, case 2, p. 146): Жена Аѯинья Семенова дочь — 30…

Unlike other eliminated letters such as Omega and Yus, Ksi was a later borrowing from Greek and does not appear in any form in the Glagolitic script, which was used until the Middle Ages.^[2][3]

Ksi was eliminated from the Russian alphabet along with psi, omega, and yus in the Civil Script of 1708 (Peter the Great's Grazhdanka),^[4] and has also been dropped from other secular languages. It was briefly restored in 1710 and ultimately deleted in 1735. While it was no longer used in typographic fonts, it continued to be used by the church, and since clergy actively participated in civil censuses, Ksi can be found in multiple handwritten civil texts all the way until the early 1800s.

The Russian surname "Apraksin" (Апраѯінъ; modern: Апраксин) in the Civil Script. Note the variant form of "ksi" (ѯ) in the name is an Izhitsa with a tail.

In the Civil Script during Peter the Great's time, Ksi was also written similarly to an izhitsa with a tail.

Ksi constituted the number "60" in the Cyrillic numeral system.^[5]

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	Ѯ		ѯ
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KSI		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER KSI
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1134	U+046E	1135	U+046F
UTF-8	209 174	D1 AE	209 175	D1 AF
Numeric character reference	Ѯ	Ѯ	ѯ	ѯ

Related letters and other similar characters

• X x : Latin letter X
• Х х : Cyrillic letter Kha
• Ξ ξ : Greek letter Xi