While naming the new variant, omicron,
first detected in the South African city of Pretoria, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) has skipped two letters of the Greek alphabet, one of which
is a “common surname” in China, even shared by Chinese President Xi Jinping, reported Indian Express. 

Also Read: More omicron cases pop up as world rushes to learn more

The WHO has been naming variants of
SARS-CoV-2 after Greek alphabets, but for naming omicron, the scientists
avoided two letters “nu” and “xi” and chose the name omicron instead. The United
Nations’ international health wing, the WHO, had already used 12 letters of the
Greek alphabet before the new variant was detected in South Africa last week.
When the news of a new variant of coronavirus first came out, “nu” started
trending on social media platforms as a possible name for the new variant,
which is believed to be more transmissible than the other variants.

Explaining the reason for not picking “nu” or “xi” as the name for the new variant, the WHO said “nu” could have been confused
with the word ‘new’ while Xi was not picked up as it is a “common surname” in China. It is understandable that the WHO avoided antagonising China and its supreme leader Xi Jinping by not naming the new variant “xi”.

“Two letters were skipped —”nu” and “xi” —
because “nu” is too easily confounded with ‘new’ and XI was not used because it
is a common surname and WHO best practices for naming new diseases (developed
in conjunction with FAO and OIE back in 2015) suggest avoiding ‘causing offence
to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups’,”
the WHO said in a statement.

All variants of the coronavirus are given
scientific names that represent their parentage and the chain of evolution. Omicron, for example, is also known by its more scientific designation
B.1.1.529, which shows that it has evolved from the B.1 lineage.

Since the scientific names are difficult to
remember, the emerging variants started to be named after the country or a
region where it was first detected. Hence, ‘UK variant’, ‘Indian variant’,
‘South African variant’, or ‘Brazilian variant’ were named after countries.

Also Read: How does Omicron compare with other COVID variants?

But as naming variants after countries
triggered controversy, the WHO wanted to abolish this trend. So the
international health agency decided to name new variants after Greek letters.
Due to the WHO’s new naming method, the ‘Indian variant’, which was also called
Bengal strain, was named Delta, while the one that was detected in the UK was
named Alpha.