Letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic letter
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…
Ksi (Ѯ, ѯ) is a letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, derived from the Greek letter Xi (Ξ, ξ). It was mainly used in Greek loanwords, especially words relating to the Church.
Ksi was eliminated from the Russian alphabet along with psi, omega, and yus in the Civil Script of 1708 (Peter the Great's Grazhdanka), and has also been dropped from other secular languages. It was briefly restored in 1710 and ultimately removed 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.
In the Civil Script during Peter the Great's time, ksi was also written similarly to an izhitsa with a tail.
It represented "60" if used as a number.