Why is a taxi called taxi?

Why is a taxi called taxi?
The word taxi is short for taxicab, which was the name given to them by Harry Nathaniel Allen when he imported the first 600 motorised taxis to be used by the New York Taxicab Company from France.

He was inspired to create the name because the meter used to decide the fare of each journey is called a taximeter, which comes from the French word taximetre which in turn comes from the German taxameter. Taxameter comes from the Latin words taxa, meaning tax or charge, and metron which is Greek for measure.

The word taxi is pronounced in the same way in almost all languages, though the spelling can change according to the language's pronunciation of particular letters - examples are the Welsh tacsi (because Welsh has no x), taksi in Finnish and taxika in Czech. Handy if you ever need a cab from the airport in any country with a language you don't speak!