When it comes to names, does Elon Musk have the X-Factor?

“Be Honest! The name X is far better than Twitter. Yes or No?” The boast was posted last month by Elon Musk’s parody account, one of many on the namesake’s platform. What followed was monsoonal, a spate of 200,000 responses scorning the new label.

Some likened the makeover to Prince’s glyph dabble of 1993, the purple popstar adopting a symbolic olive on a toothpick, with a curl of zest, as his new ID – or that’s how the logo seemed. Unpronounceable, untappable on a common keyboard, the dinkus obliged fans to call their idol “the artist formerly known as Prince”. Ring a bell? Try the phrase: “X, formerly known as Twitter.” A sense of déjà vu all over again.

Luis del Pino, a Spanish broadcaster, responded to the quasi-survey: “The integration of X into everyday language is weirder. Compare the brand as a name: “I wrote a tweet” v “I wrote an x”. Or as a verb: “I will tweet it” v “I will x it” (“Exit”, you said?). And lastly as an adjective: “A twitter-star” v “An x-star” (A former star?).

Lyn Alden, an equity strategist, joined the chorus: “To ‘tweet’ something is akin to ‘photoshop’ something or to use a ‘kleenex’. That is, the brand becomes the thing in common language, and that is valuable. Besides, a black X looks like an adult app.”

Kerosene to trampoline, English teems with genericised trademarks, as the subset is known, being brands so dominant – like biro or bubble wrap – that the proprietary name deputises for the object itself. Or the action, like frisbee and hoover, jetski and mace. Try talking about tasers without mention of tasers. Muzak minus muzak.

Most firms would swoon to own such a dictionary niche, a penthouse overlooking the Shorter Oxford, but not Musk. The squillionaire must have other rockets to fly, judging by his bent to swap the bluebird logo for a brutalist kiss, forsaking the platform’s goodwill label, and its verb, in one messy revamp. Or borrowing the German: in one messy Schlimmbesserung (a so-called improvement that only makes things worse).

Disruption is the longer game, I sense. We know the tycoon’s dream is to build an “everything app”, as the site’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, flagged last year. Wiser to jilt the tweet-hearts now, perhaps, paving the way for a one-stop shop tomorrow, a single site for news, banking, travel and funny cat videos. Rather than X as letter, the long game may entail x as multiplier.