X Marks the Street

There are two streets in New York City that begin with X, if you don’t count Brooklyn’s Ave. X in Sheepshead Bay. Both are nondescript, but I’m glad they’re there, since X has always gotten short shrift in the naming department, and when most words begin with x, the letter’s forced to adopt a different sound, since beginning a word with a “kz” sound would be awkward. Usually in English, a “z” sound gets the nod. Both are Xenia Streets: in Corona, Queens, and Old Town, Staten Island.

Xenia (which I’d thought was a flower...