Military Alphabet

aka: Phonetic Alphabet

Also called a spelling alphabet or a phonetic alphabet, (not to be confused with the entirely different International Phonetic Alphabet,) this is a system of assigning to each letter of the alphabet a word that begins with that letter. This way, if something has to be spelled over a radio, telephone, etc. there is much less chance of the wrong information being transmitted.

The military, police departments and radio operators all make frequent use of this. Phone-based customer service and technical support also use it, but with more informal construction (any word will do), for the same reasons. (The formal ones specifically pick words themselves which all sound distinct from all the others with poor sound quality.) The most common alphabets are shown below, from A to Z.

NATO/ICAO	WWII (US)	WWII (UK)	APCO Project 2 (used by LAPD)
Alfanote spelled this way to avoid mispronunciation	Able	Able/Affirm	Adam
Bravo	Baker	Baker	Boy
Charlie	Charlie	Charlie	Charlie
Delta	Dog	Dog	David
Echo	Easy	Easy	Edward
Foxtrot	Fox	Fox	Frank
Golf	George	George	George
Hotel	How	How	Henry
India	Item	Item/Interrogatory	Ida
Juliettnote spelled this way to avoid mispronunciation	Jig	Jig/Johnny	John
Kilo	King	King	King
Lima	Love	Love	Lincoln
Mike	Mike	Mike	Mary
November	Nan	Nab/Negat	Nora
Oscar	Oboe	Oboe	Ocean
Papa	Peter	Peter/Prep	Paul
Quebec	Queen	Queen	Queen
Romeo	Roger	Roger	Robert
Sierra	Sugar	Sugar	Sam
Tango	Tare	Tare	Tom
Uniform	Uncle	Uncle	Union
Victor	Victor	Victor	Victor
Whiskey	William	William	William
X-Ray	X-Ray	X-Ray	X-Ray
Yankee	Yoke	Yoke	Young
Zulu	Zebra	Zebra	Zebra

The NATO version is near universal in the modern age, because it is also used for civil aviation throughout the whole world (for which English is the only official language). In addition, if the NATO system is being used, expect the digit 3 to be pronounced "tree"; 4 to be pronounced "fo-wer" to distinguish from "for", 5 to be pronounced "fife" so it won't be confused with "fire"; and 9 to be pronounced "niner", to keep it distinct from "nein", German for "no" (as well as from "five," as the two are indistinguishable otherwise over a distorted signal).

This is used almost exclusively in modern military shows. Non-military shows which use it will usually stick to A-E, since they are more recognizable. Exclusively military shows tend to use more of the letters.

Military units will sometimes use one of the letters as their designation (for example, 'Bravo Company'). Individual personnel may refer to themselves or others in the military alphabet over radios; "Echo-6-Charlie" would be someone whose pay-grade is E-6, with a last name beginning with the letter C. (Alternately, the number is code for a position within the unit. 6 usually is the commander.)

Other languages may have their own similar alphabet systems.

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Examples

Charlie Oscar Mike India Charlie Bravo Oscar Oscar Kilo Sierra (Comic Books)

• Paperinik New Adventures has two (ex-)government agents that occassionally clash with our hero named Charlie Delta and Fransisco de Gamma. It later turns out that Charlie's parents were both in military intelligence, and named their kids after the NATO signaling alphabet. His older siblings are named Alpha Delta and Bravo Delta, and if he had any younger siblings, they'd be Delta, Echo and Foxtrot Delta.

Fox Item Love Mike Alfa November India Mike Alfa Tango Echo Delta (Film - Animated)

• In The Incredibles, Helen identifies her plane as "India Golf Niner Niner" — a reference to director Brad Bird's earlier film, The Iron Giant, being released in 1999.
• In The Mitchells vs. the Machines, once the robot apocalypse starts, Rick tells his family to remember their survival training, and lists of a long series of NATO letters. They spell out YAFTBTAAA.

Fox Item Love Mike Love Item Victor Echo Alfa Charlie Tango India Oscar November (Film - Live-Action)

• The Cannonball Run. The Obstructive Bureaucrat trying to stop the illegal road race is watching the contestants at the start gate and getting the woman with his to write down the license plate numbers. He confuses her by using this trope for the numbers (she keeps writing down the word in full until he explains what it means).
• Die Hard 2 uses military alphabet when referring to the plane that is bringing General Esperanza to the United States. It is designated FM (Foreign Military) 1, though later in the film, both Colonel Stuart and Esperanza refer to it as "Foxtrot Michael 1", despite the military alphabet using the shortened name Mike for the letter M.
• Dr. Strangelove is a fairly early example. The B-52 is assigned to targets Yankee-Golf-Tango-three-six-zero and November-Bravo-XRay-one-zero-eight as part of the wing's Attack Plan R for Romeo, or Robert (used by General Ripper in communication with his RAF exchange officer Mandrake, as per the British Royal Air Force's own pre-NATO phonetic alphabet).
• Flight of the Intruder uses this for a bit of a Genius Bonus: A character uses "Alfa Mike Foxtrot^note  "Adios, Mother Fuckers"" to sign off after calling in an airstrike on himself because the North Vietnamese were using him as bait for rescue choppers.
• Hot Shots! had a very funny parody of the phonetic alphabet.
  Jim 'Wash Out' Pfaffenbach: Alfa Velveeta Knuckle Underwear, you are cleared for take-off. When you hit that nuclear weapons plant... drop a bomb for me!
  Lt. Commander Block: Uh, Sphincter Mucus Niner Ringworm, roger!
• The survivors in The Island (2005) have these as part of their names, although it apparently takes place in a future where Golf and Hotel have been replaced by the more sci-fi-sounding Gamma and Halo.
• George Clooney's character in The Men Who Stare at Goats. "We're Oscar Mike. That's 'on the move' soldier." Approximately coincides with the popularity of Generation Kill and Modern Warfare 2.
• In Star Trek (2009), Chekov's includes "victor" twice. The computer still doesn't understand him due to his accent.
• In Star Trek: First Contact, Picard's, Crusher's and Worf's command authorization codes feature "tango," "charlie" and "echo" respectively. Picard's also includes "alpha," but it's most likely the Greek letter since Crusher's and Worf's feature "beta" and "gamma" in the same character position of their respective codes.
• The highway patrol in Super Troopers use a unique version when reading license plates over the radio. With inherently funny words like "eunuch".
• In the 2010 The A-Team movie, Face uses "Alfa Mike Foxtrot", standing in for "Adios, Mother Fucker" (the full form of which, except for its final use, is hidden by a Sound-Effect Bleep).
• Used occasionally in 2001: A Space Odyssey (where it combines very naturally with Danger Deadpan):
  "X-Ray Delta One, this is Mission Control. Roger your two-zero-one-three. Sorry you fellows are having a bit of trouble. We are reviewing telemetric information in our mission simulator and will advise. Roger your plan to go E.V.A.^note A Three-Letter Acronym which does not get this treatment and replace Alfa Echo Three Five unit prior to failure."^note The actor playing Mission Control was a real-life air traffic controller.
• WarGames opens with two missile silo officers receiving nuclear launch codes delivered as a series of NATO letters.
• The title of the film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a war-correspondent-themed dramedy. You can guess what that stands for.

Lima India Tango Echo Romeo Alfa Tango Uniform Romeo Echo (Literature)

• In Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, Spike Milligan mentions how the British in North Africa had to adapt to the American system when America joined the war, to much confusion.
  • War games mentioned show the British dividing themselves into Ack Army and Beer Army.
• Biggles uses the now less well known World War I era British alphabet. One of the few uses that survived is "Ack-Ack" for AA (anti-air) fire.
• Within The Bourne Identity, Bourne was given the callname of Cain with an elaborate backstory involving the U.S. having changed the C from Charlie to Cain during The Vietnam War due to confusion with the designation of the Vietcong as "Charlie." Just as Cain replaced Charlie in the Military Alphabet, Cain would replace Charlie (Carlos the Jackal).
• The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy features an overly-educated police officer who can never remember "all this Foxtrot Tango Piper business", so he makes up his own using words the sergeant he's reporting to doesn't know - "W for Wagner. No, Wagner!"
• molesworth: The schoolboys use the WW2 callsign 'Able Baker'.
• Rivers of London
  • Inspector Nightingale has the unique callsign Zulu-One, representing his unique position in the Met.
  • The foxes (who were uplifted and trained as spies by persons unknown for reasons unknown) use an alphabet that is mostly the WWII UK version, including for their names. But the main fox character in What Abigail Did That Summer is named Indigo, which is the UK police version. When Abigail asks why they use this version, Indigo simply replies that this is the version they know.
• Robert Westall's short story Blackham's Wimpy revolves around a bomber group, featuring planes S-Sugar, C-Charlie and L-Love, among others.
• In Team Yankee, the eponymous team is named for the phonetic letter Y, while its sister unit, Team Bravo, is named for the phonetic letter B. The phonetic alphabet is also featured prominently during radio communications.
• In You Only Live Twice, Tiger Tanaka tells James Bond that the Japanese do not swear. Bond expresses incredulity that Tiger never wants to say Freddie Uncle Charlie Katie.

Mary Union Sam Ida Charlie (Music)

• One of The Bloodhound Gang's many Intercourse with You songs is named "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo".
• One of Wilco's albums is titled Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which was taken from a sample that's featured on the track "Poor Places".

Papa India November Bravo Alfa Lima Lima (Pinball)

• Williams Electronics' F-14 Tomcat identifies the enemy fighters with the NATO alphabet — Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Fox, and Golf. The last opponent is the Big Bad, General Yagov.

Papa Romeo Oscar Whiskey Romeo Echo Sierra Tango Lima India November Golf (Pro Wrestling)

• The entrance theme of WWE stable The Shield starts off with radio chatter spelling out "Shield" with the NATO military alphabet (Sierra - Hotel - India - Echo - Lima - Delta), which is fitting, considering their paramilitary-esque gimmick.

Roger Able Dog Item Oboe (Radio)

• Cabin Pressure has a scene in which Arthur is trying to learn the NATO alphabet (as used in real-life civil aviation) with predictable consequences.
  "The phonetic alphabet version of M is not 'muh'!"

Tango Alpha Bravo Lima Echo Tango Oscar Papa Golf Alpha Mike Echo Sierra (Tabletop Games)

• BattleTech briefly used this to describe the configurations of Inner Sphere OmniMechs, starting with "Prime" for the main configuration and using the NATO alphabet for subsequent configurations. However, when configurations started skipping letters in the sequence, they dropped this entirely in favor of the regular alphabet.
  • Also used in the BattleTech Expanded Universe novels, particularly those by Victor Milan, here various soldiers use the phonetic alphabet to swear colorfully without offending the editors. One popular example is "Sierra Foxtrot,"^note Shit's Fucked! which is often used as a noun, adjective, and interjection by the very earthy 17th Recon Regiment.
• Game Designers Workshop, having started out in wargames, used these in some of their games.
  • Twilight: 2000, in which the characters are generally NATO military, includes the NATO alphabet in the rulebook for players to use.
  • 2300 AD uses the NATO alphabet as Reporting Names for Kafer small craft and missiles, but not for starships, which use the Greek alphabet.

Tare Easy Love Easy Victor Item Sugar Item Oboe Nan (Television)

• The TV show Adam-12 was named for the LAPD patrol car with the call sign "Adam-12 (A-12)" that the cops rode in. "Adam" (A) was the designation for two-officer patrol units. Other unit designations you often hear are "King" (K) for unmarked cars used by detectives, "Mary" (M) for motorcycle units, and "X-ray" (X) for a second set of two-person patrol units (likely to mean auxiliary or secondary units with less-seasoned officers—rookies in later seasons are frequently in X-ray units). Also, there's a frequent subversion: calling the letter "L" instead of "Lincoln" for a single-occupant unit (usually driven by supervisors like sergeants).
  • In the opening, you can hear the dispatcher (who was real-life LAPD dispatcher Shaaron Claridge) requesting reports on auto license plates, spelled out using the LAPD phonetic alphabet.
• Archer 's inability to use this creates a funny moment in "Skytanic". Seriously, Mancy?
• The Colonial Fleet in Battlestar Galactica uses this, with a couple space-flavored differences: "Constellation" and "Nebula". Only ten letters are known from the show, but the RPG sourcebooks expand on this with the entire alphabet. Most of the differences from the NATO alphabet are either space-related (Meteor and Quasar) or religiously significant (Icon and Juno).
• On The Bill, Sun Hill's callsigns all use the combination Sierra-Oscar. Another police-related drama of the early 1980s, following a female police officer, was named JulietBravo.
• The LAPD variation is used extensively in CHiPs, with the lead characters' call signs starting with 7M (Seven-Mary), with M the common designation for a Motor(cycle) unit.
• The Los Angeles actives in Dollhouse — who are the focus of the show — are all named from it. (The ones at the Washington, DC branch are named after Greek gods, suggesting that each branch uses a different scheme.)
• Parodied in Family Guy:
  Radio: Unit 17, please report.
  Stewie: Ten-four. Everything's Charlie Forty Sixty.
  Brian: What does that mean?
  Stewie: I dunno, I just think you're supposed to say names and numbers. Nobody's corrected me so far.
  (explosion)
  Stewie: What the hell was that? (into radio) Help! Help! I mean...Charlie Tango Cash, Forty-seven Victor Charlie, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
  Radio: Roger that. We're moving to your position.
• The military alphabet is often used in JAG. Hey, all the main characters are military officers, so why not?
• The Boot Camp Episode of Jake 2.0 is called "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot."
• M*A*S*H had nurses named Able and Baker.
• In one NCIS episode, information is being confused so Gibbs requires everyone to use the phonetic alphabet. Abby takes to it particularly easily.
• Played for Laughs on NCIS: Los Angeles when Deeks invents his own phonetic alphabet that uses the names of heavy metal bands.
• Since half the characters are ex-military, it pops up often on Person of Interest. Additionally, this is how the Machine communicates with anyone who's not Root.
• The Simpsons episode "Separate Vocations" shows that the Springfield police have an unusual radio alphabet: Snake's licence plate is read out as "Eggplant Xerxes Crybaby Overbite Narwhal".
• Being centered around the Air Force, Stargate SG-1 naturally uses this trope, especially with the characters who have a military background. If you ever hear "Sierra Golf Charlie" mentioned, they're talking about Stargate Command. One of the peculiarities of number pronunciation is on display when O'Neill's call sign is used: Sierra Golf One Niner.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Brothers" has Data rattle off a massively long command authorization code that includes "charlie," "tango" and "victor."
• Subverted on The Thin Blue Line when it turns out to be requests for drinks from a pizza place. "Tango. Tango. Lilt and a Fanta."

Victor India Delta Echo Oscar Golf Alpha Mike Echo Sierra (Video Games)

• The flight simulator, Falcon 3.0, makes use of some real-life examples. After shooting down an enemy plane, you'll hear your wingman say "Alpha Mike Foxtrot" ("Adios, mother fucker"). Also, if you give your wingman an order that'll get him killed (e.g., telling him to descend more than his current altitude), he'll tell you "Kilo Mike Alpha" ("Kiss my ass").
• In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the pilot Wilbur speaks like a soldier on a field mission, giving himself and the player codenames, discussing their outings to other islands like a battle plan, and using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet unnecessarily. However, due to the game being rated E, "Whiskey" is substituted with "Whisker" for the letter W.
• In an example of Shown Their Work, the announcer in Battlefield 1 uses the British military alphabet that was used during World War I by the Royal Navy ("Apple" for "A", as an example).
• The downloadable platform game Blade Kitten, which is based off the webcomic of the same name, has various Mooks cry out "Oscar Michael Golf" (Oh My God) or "Sierra Oscar Lima" (Shit Outta Luck) as you defeat them.
• The Borderlands series: With the legendary shield aptly named the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. When damaged it ejects an "IED booster", which then throws out three volleys of electrical grenades. Players take self-damage in the game, so if you don't run away, your own shield may kill you. It appears in multiple games, working the same way:
  • Borderlands 2
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!: The IED Booster has its own Flavor Text:
    ...all foxtrot'd up.
• The Call of Duty series, specifically Modern Warfare and its sequels, are credited with popularizing a number of NATO alphabet phrases among American teenagers. Most notably, the use of "Tango" to mean "target", "Oscar Mike" for "on the move", and the title of one Modern Warfare 2 mission, "Whiskey Hotel", to mean White House (though this last one may or may not actually be used by the military).
• Cuphead: In The Delicious Last Course, losing to the Yankee Yippers during "Doggone Dogfight" results in them leaving a parting taunt in the World War II RAF alphabet:
  "Affirm Roger Fox! Affirm Roger Fox!"
• Stations in Elite Dangerous will address you by ship type and the first three letters of your user name when you show up; their reactions change depending on your friendliness with the locals, so for instance, a Sidewinder pilot whose name starts with MTT on good terms with the station would get something like:
  Station Command: "Delacy Mike, Tango, Tango, welcome commander, glad to have you aboard."
• The Ranger outposts in Fallout: New Vegas have designations from the military alphabet. And for a case of Punny Name, Camp Golf is set up in the ruins of an actual golf resort.
• The phonetic jargon in Generation Kill was a plot point: as the reporter grows closer to the squad, they finally start telling him what some of the phrases mean. Like Whiskey Tango = White Trash.
• In Half-Life 2 the Overwatch dispatcher uses phonetic codenames and numbers — such as "X-ray 8" or "Union 5" — when addressing specific Civil Protection teams.
  • In Half-Life: Opposing Force, one of the levels is named "Foxtrot Uniform", which is an acronym for "Fucked Up".
• Halo uses it extensively. Fitting, since it's a military-based series. Notable examples include "Sierra" (Spartan) and "Bravo Kilo" (refers to Brutes, short for "Baby Kong").
• In the English version of Inazuma Eleven GO 2, the members of the villainous Protocol Omega teams are each named after a letter of the NATO alphabet. It's likely intended to emphasize their cold, military precision.
• Cole Phelps' radio codename is "Car 11 King".
• Corki the Daring Bombardier from League of Legends makes some use of this when you order him into battle, usually to disguise profanity.
  It's a Charlie Foxtrot!^translation clusterfuck
  
  Delta Sierra^translation dog shit at twelve-o-clock!
  
  Lima Oscar Lima!^translation LOL
• In the Left 4 Dead comic the army call the infected "Whiskey Deltas", for walking dead.
• Live A Live: In the Distant Future chapter in the remake, once Kirk and Kato leave the Cogito Ergo Sum to repair the Watanabe communication antennae^note one of the many instances of the Watanabe Running Gag, with the child witnessing his father's death; in this instance, there are main and supporting antennae, with the latter capable of operating without the former, Kato says the code required to switch the antennae to maintenance mode in NATO Phonetic Alphabet, the code in question being "Whiskey alpha tango alpha november alpha bravo...". Before he could say the last letter, however, Kirk gets his oxygen supply cut off when repairing the main antenna and asphyxiates, and later dies in the medbay when his life support gets sabotaged.
• MechWarrior 3 had nav point designations of Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog and Echo. The second and fourth games use Greek letters. Living Legends uses the NATO system for Betty's pronounciation of the alphanumeric base names, up to Golf.
  Outpost ECHO SIX Captured.
• In Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island, Nancy finds a letter telling a story that makes no sense, but incorporates many alphabetic terms. Read on their own, the terms spell out a brief message that's the true meaning of the letter. Fortunately for non-military players, there's a postcard around that explains this trope.
• Operation Flashpoint makes heavy use of the NATO phonetic alphabet. The topographical maps of the each of the game's islands are partitioned into squares with letters along the top and bottom and numbers down the sides. Combined these letters and numbers form map references and the letters are pronounced over the radio as their phonetic equivalents, so a squad leader might order his men to "Go to Delta Foxtrot Two Five", for example. The words are also often used as codenames to identify the various squads. "Alpha" through "Echo" are usually used to refer to infantry squads, "Yankee" usually refers to a tank platoon, the helicopter gunships are usually "November" and so on.
• In PAYDAY 2 is a rather subtle one. You can find a casual looking magazine with the title of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
• The three captains in Pikmin 3 are named after the first three letters in the NATO alphabet: Alph, Brittany, and Charlie.
• The Police Quest series uses the LAPD alphabet to refer to specific units. In the second game, for example, you and your partner are 52mary when called by the dispatcher.
• Zones in Rebel Inc. are designated with two letters from the alphabet (Alpha Victor, Golf Sierra...), and you can generate random operation names with two random words, many of the random words being the military alphabet.
• Rising Storm 2: Vietnam uses the NATO Phonetic Alphabet to label each capture point on a map, starting from Alpha all the way up to Oscar on some of the largest maps.
• In Titanfall 2, BT-7274 is sometimes referred to as "Bravo-Tango-7274", notably when Captain Lastimosa transfers control of him to you.
• Wing Commander Prophecy has one of the (non-Red Shirt) wingmen give you a blistering "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over" if you accidentally shoot his ship.
• In Wolfenstein: The New Order, B.J. discovers Nazi documents referencing "Da'at Yichud" and uses the American WWII code to spell the name back to Mission Control so they can research it while he's on the mission.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, aliens are called X-Rays by the soldiers, probably due to the Nicknaming the Enemy pattern common in US forces to call their enemies by the Military Alphabet code for one of their letters.

William Easy Baker Charlie Oboe Mike Interrogatory Charlie Sugar (Web Comics)

• Schlock Mercenary: Various examples, but in one comic, after getting some unexpected heavy fire support from an off-screen character, Tagon angrily informs him that it is rude to "fire into someone else's Charlie Foxtrot without asking permission first". Charlie Foxtrot being 20th century American military slang for "Cluster Fuck" (and, evidently, 30th century mercenary slang for the same concept). There are lots of variations on this term, up to not-quite-by-the-name one.
• Anasigma's Men in Black in Skin Horse have two-letter military alphabet codenames. There is an additional theme to the ones revealed, appropriate to a strip featuring Talking Animals and many Shout Outs to children's literature: Echo Bravo, Alfa Alfa and Charlie Sierra.
• Waterworks: The green antagonists have this as their Theme Naming, either directly like Juliet and Foxtrot, or by wordplay like (Lima) Bean and Pvt. (Echo) Chambers.

Whiskey Echo Sierra Tango Echo Romeo November Alfa November India Mike Alfa Tango India Oscar November (Western Animation)

• Played For Laughs in The Owl House where Luz is playing around on walkie talkies with King and refers to Eda as Echo Delta Alfa. King isn't familair with the concept (given that he's lived in the Demon Realm his entire life) and ends up assuming that she's speaking in Spanish again.

Robert Edward Adam Lincoln Lincoln Ida Frank Edward (Real Life)

• The NATO alphabet (Alpha Bravo code) was originally designed so that every code word is pronounced in each NATO language in the similar way, so there would be no linguistic misunderstandings. There are some discrepancies, however; "Juliet" is usually "Giulietta" in Italian, and easily mistaken for G. Inversely, Quebec is pronounced in the French manner (Kay-bek) which might confuse some English speakers (Kway-bek).
  • In Indonesia, 'Lima' is replaced with 'London' as 'lima' means '5' in local language. Likewise, 'Whiskey' is replaced for 'Washington' because of religious reasons in Arabic countries.
• Most Soviet submarines have Reporting Names randomly drawn from the alphabet. They eventually ran out and changed to another system involving Russian names for fish.
• The Viet Cong during The Vietnam War get their nickname "Charlie" from the phonetic alphabet (think "Charlie don't surf"); they were referred to by US commanders as "Victor Charlie" until it was realised it was one syllable more than the original name, so they dropped the "Victor" to leave just "Charlie".
• Due to organizational inertia, the US Navy winds up using both its WWII alphabet and the NATO one in certain specific situations. For most purposes, the NATO alphabet is the standard, but for material conditions (i.e., which doors/valves to open/shut for batttlestations or chemical attack, etc.) the WWII alphabet is used, because it always has been. Leads to phrases such as, "At time 0000 Zulu, set material condition Zebra."
• Most nations have a military alphabet in their native language, for example, Swedish has "Adam, Bertil, Caesar", German has "Anton, Berta, Caeser" Finnish has "Aarne, Berta, Celsius" and Turkish has "Aydin, Bekir, Cemal" as their first three letters. Nations that have converted to NATO alphabet, but still use non-NATO letters (eg: Å, Ä, Ö, Ü) have to convert these into standard (AA, AE, OE, Y).
  • Corresponding Finnish alphabet are Åke (male name), Äiti (mother) and Öljy (oil).
• In an amusing anecdote, John F. Kennedy was talking with his wife and some friends when Kennedy mentioned to one of his friends that someone was a "Charlie Uncle Nan Tare". Jacqueline Kennedy overheard and asked what that meant. Her question was left unanswered.
• The Cyrillic military alphabet used in Russia is notably different in that it mostly consists of given names (A is Anna, B is Boris, etc.). Only the letters that don't have common names starting with are other words: Ts is Tsaplya (crane), Sch is Schuka (pike fish) and the like. Another version is used in the Russian Navy, consisting of old pre-revolutionary names of Cyrillic letters: Az, Buki, Vedi and so on, and flag signals are marked by these. Other services also use it sometimes.
• From 1950 to 1952, the US WWII list was used to name tropical storms and hurricanes that formed in the Atlantic basin.
• Such alphabets are also used in civil aviation for obvious reasons. The NATO alphabet was originally invented by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and was only later adapted by the NATO militaries.
• Ham Radio operators are taught to use phonetic pronunciation for letters and numbers when signal conditions make it difficult to listen clearly, especially important when giving their callsigns (which are always alphanumeric combinations such as W1AW). Newer operations are commonly taught the NATO alphabet as the standard, but one will encounter all sorts of variations on the radio. Using the phonetic alphabet when it isn't necessary for clear communication, such as when the signal conditions are ideal, can result in one being judged as a "Lid".

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TANGO VICTOR TANGO ROMEO OSCAR PAPA ECHO SIERRA

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