Pylimitics

If something is fine, valid, or acceptable, there are plenty of English words available to communicate that judgement. One of them is “cromulent,” as in “…it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” You don’t hear “cromulent” as much as some of its synonyms, but you might run across it here and there. David X. Cohen, a scholar specializing in “cromulent,” has used it to describe his middle initial, “X”. His birth name was David S. Cohen, but at one point he joined a union that had a strict rule against matching names, and there already was a David S. Cohen, so he substituted the X. He further explains that there is a period after the X so that nobody would think his name was a mathematical formula like “David times Cohen.” He also thought it could lead to him being recognized and remembered more often, neither of which have reportedly occurred. Nevertheless, X is a perfectly cromulent middle initial, particularly as it’s embiggened from the lower case version.