why do Chinese words/names use X for the Sh- sound?
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Other folks have explained the principles behind pinyin, correctly identifying the repurposing of the character <x> for the sound /ʂ/ (which is fairly similar to English /ʃ/, which we write as <sh>).
However, no one has yet answered why they chose that sound-symbol correspondence in particular. Why should the <x> denote /ʂ/ and not another sound?
I poked around online and couldn’t find much, especially because I don’t speak or read Chinese. However, one person gave an answer which matched my suspicion (and cited a source in Chinese which I can’t read): it’s based on the Iberian usage of <x> for /ʃ/. A number of languages of the Iberian peninsula use or have used <x> that way in the past, including Portuguese, Basque, Old Spanish, Catalan, and Galician. This usage was extended to unrelated languages under colonial influence by Iberian powers, such as Nahuatl. Indeed, in the word “Mexica,” the people for whom Mexico is named, the <x> represents that /ʃ/.
It seems within reason that the choice to use <x> for /ʂ/ in pinyin was made by analogy.
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