The World Health Organization (WHO) raised eyebrows when it announced the name of the latest Covid-19 variant on Friday, Omicron, skipping over the next two letters in the Greek Alphabet.

The naming system using Greek letters was implemented in May to avoid confusion between variants and to lower the risk of stigmatizing areas of the world from which variants emerged.

The variant prior to Omicron was named Mu, which is followed by Nu and Xi in the Greek alphabet.

“‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’” Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the WHO said on Saturday.

“And ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name,” added Jsarevic, saying that the WHO works to avoid “causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups” in naming viruses.

Many observers suggested that Xi was skipped as “Xi” composes part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name. Former President Donald Trump stirred controversy early in the pandemic by calling Covid-19 the “China virus” — a term Trump repeated as recently as Friday during an interview on the Fox Business Network.

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