The NATO phonetic alphabet is familiar to most of us, with its first few words: Alfa, Bravo, and Charlie. If you have watched enough war movies, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot probably come up too. But Kilo, Mike, and Sierra? Few people would recognize those names by ear. And how much do we actually know about why these particular words were chosen for spelling out other words over walkie-talkies or other low-fidelity communication systems?
The response, it turns out, concerns almost nothing connected to NATO. Rob Watts, who runs the channel RobWords, lays out in a new video that the alphabet is a “spelling alphabet,” and its history traces back to the invention of the telephone in the eighteen-seventies.
Early Telephonists and Their Mishearing Problem
Telephonists who worked early on found that when spelling out names, one letter often got misheard for another. The notion of assigning a common word beginning with each letter came about naturally, even though deciding which words to pair with each letter involved far more trial and error than anyone expected.
The issue lay in a scratchy connection where similar-sounding letters could be mistaken for one another. The answer that came forward was to choose words that sound distinct from one another and from the letters they stand for. This reasoning guided the entire undertaking.
Western Union’s Place-Names Version
During the opening years of the twentieth century, Western Union released a spelling code that drew heavily upon personal and geographic names. The roster covered such entries as Adams, Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Edward. The choice made sense, since names of places tend to be well known, simple to recall, and seldom confused with one another.
The British army adopted a similarly odd variation by World War I, substituting words like Beer, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pip, and Yorker for the letters of the alphabet. The substitution scheme follows each letter’s initial, though the word choices show little method behind them.
The Globalization Push Behind ICAO’s Revision
By World War II, “every armed service in Britain and the U.S. had developed its own spelling alphabet.” The need for a single universal spelling alphabet became pressing in light of the rapidly globalizing nature of human affairs, and not just the military kind.
The ICAO, which was set up to govern air travel during peaceful times, stepped in to update the spelling alphabet used by American and British military forces. Its aim was to include English words that could be spoken clearly by people who do not speak the language, while keeping words that sound alike to a bare minimum. That last condition is what really shapes the whole project.
From ICAO to the NATO Standard
The list was completed by 1956, when ICAO settled on its final version, which has since become the NATO phonetic alphabet, or more formally the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, that everyone is familiar with today. It covers the well-known names such as Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta, though it reaches beyond those names most people recognize.
The formal title for this system is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. It covers the entire alphabet, from start to finish, with well-known words assigned to each letter, including Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Kilo, Mike, and Sierra among others.
The 1956 standard is the one that survives today.
Related Work Worth Watching
The channel run by Rob Watts deals with language and communication at large, and frequently looks into the beginnings of common items. His account of the NATO alphabet falls within that ongoing set of works. Anyone who wants to know more about how words function should keep an eye on it.
The history of the spelling alphabet — from Western Union’s place-names through the British army’s eccentric wartime version to ICAO’s 1956 standard — is genuinely curious.
Key Facts
- The telephone was invented in the eighteen-seventies.
- Western Union published its place-names version in the early nineteen-tens.
- The British army used Beer, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pip, and Yorker in World War I.
- ICAO finalized its list in 1956.
- The official name is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet.
The NATO phonetic alphabet has its origins laid bare, with a clear purpose and a known ancestry. There is no longer any doubt about how it came to be. What remains open to the individual is whether they choose to commit the rest of it to memory.
See the video the story is built around at Openculture.
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