According to the Greek alphabet, the World Health Organization was expected to name the latest Covid-19 variant “Nu” or “Xi.” But both names were seen as problematic.

During 2005, six Greek letters from Alpha to Zeta were used with a total of 28 named systems. There is a list of 30 Greek alphabet storm names available to be tapped from Alpha to Omega.

The Greek alphabet will be replaced by a supplemental list of names using the same rules as the main Atlantic hurricane season naming list — a list of names A-Z but excluding the letters Q, U, X ...

There are only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet and we’ve already used half of them to identify what the WHO calls “variants of concern” and “variants of interest.” ...

The organization’s Hurricane Committee announced Wednesday that the Greek alphabet will no longer be used to name tropical cyclones. The Greek alphabet was used whenever the annual list of ...

In doing so, the WHO decided to skip over two letters in the Greek alphabet: nu and xi. The reasons for doing this remained a bit of a mystery until the WHO itself clarified the issue on Saturday.

Going forward, the agency will use letters of the Greek alphabet when discussing the variants rather than pango lineage, scientific names or by referring to them by the country they were detected ...

With only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, however, there is the grim possibility that the WHO may run out of names for variants. It has already used 12 letters, with Mu named in September.