The Genius Logic of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet: How It Was Created & How It Works

Most of us can rat­tle off the first few words-that-stand-for-let­ters of the NATO pho­net­ic alpha­bet. Alfa, Bra­vo, and Char­lie no doubt come right to mind, and depend­ing on how many war movies you’ve seen, so may Delta, Echo, and Fox­trot. But how many of us would rec­og­nize Kilo, Mike, and Sier­ra? For that mat­ter, how much do any of us know about how these par­tic­u­lar words came to be used to spell out oth­er words when com­mu­ni­cat­ing over walkie-talkies or oth­er low-fideli­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems? In the video above for his YouTube chan­nel Rob­Words, YouTu­ber Rob Watts explains the devel­op­ment of and log­ic behind the NATO pho­net­ic alpha­bet, wast­ing no time in clar­i­fy­ing that it isn’t a pho­net­ic alpha­bet, nor was it cre­at­ed by NATO.

What we actu­al­ly have here, Watts says, is a “spelling alpha­bet,” and its sto­ry goes back to the inven­tion of the tele­phone in the eigh­teen-sev­en­ties. “Ear­ly tele­phon­ists found that if ever they need­ed to spell some­thing out, like some­one’s name, one let­ter would get mis­heard as anoth­er.” The idea of express­ing each let­ter with a com­mon word start­ing with that let­ter arose nat­u­ral­ly, though fig­ur­ing out exact­ly which words to use took a lot more tri­al and error.

In the ear­ly nine­teen-tens, West­ern Union pub­lished a spelling alpha­bet con­sist­ing most­ly of the names of peo­ple and places: Adams, Boston, Chica­go, Den­ver, Edward, and so on. By World War I, the British army had also imple­ment­ed a rather more eccen­tric ver­sion, using words like Beer, Mon­key, Nuts, Orange, Pip, and York­er; by World War II, “every armed ser­vice in Britain and the U.S. had devel­oped its own spelling alpha­bet.”

In light of the rapid­ly glob­al­iz­ing nature of human affairs, and not just the mil­i­tary kind, the need for a sin­gle uni­ver­sal spelling alpha­bet became press­ing. It was­n’t until the estab­lish­ment of the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, meant to over­see the skies in peace­time, that earnest work began on a revi­sion of the U.S.-U.K. com­bined forces’ exist­ing spelling alpha­bet, incor­po­rat­ing Eng­lish words eas­i­ly pro­nounce­able by non-Eng­lish speak­ers, while also being min­i­mal­ly con­fus­able for one anoth­er. By 1956, ICAO final­ized its list, which has remained the NATO pho­net­ic alpha­bet (or, offi­cial­ly, the Inter­na­tion­al Radiotele­pho­ny Spelling Alpha­bet) we all know today — or we at least par­tial­ly know. It may well be worth your time to mem­o­rize the rest, since you nev­er know when you’ll have to keep your Papas and Que­becs straight.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Alpha­bet Explained: The Ori­gin of Every Let­ter

The Evo­lu­tion of the Alpha­bet: A Col­or­ful Flow­chart, Cov­er­ing 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to Today

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

What Eng­lish Would Sound Like If It Was Pro­nounced Pho­net­i­cal­ly

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.