Thinking about the über-prestige factor of short names brings to mind:

• g = the hypothesized "general intelligence" factor [1]
• Q = the hypothesized long-lost pre-New Testament book of quotations from Jesus, used as a reference by the writers of the Gospels [2]

What other such one-letter names are there? In the two-letter department, ultra-short amateur radio call signs were once much sought-after. I'm still hanging on to N6WX and my brother Keith is K5WX, identifiers earned decades ago after much study. Two-letter second-level domain names for ".com" are apparently no longer issued [3]. For instance, Bill Press, author of Numerical Recipes, once told me that as long as he keeps renewing http://nr.com he can keep it, but if it ever lapses it's gone ...

(cf. BooksToConsider (1999-04-16), RootingForTheYankees (2005-10-03), SilentKeys (2007-09-29), ...) - ^z - 2009-06-29