I spent a bit of my career on the phone doing support for a national computer vendor. In addition to the difficulties of walking people through opening the case and diagnosing motherboard issues, I found myself needing to overcome language barriers. While I only have a hint of an accent (or so I’ve been told), spelling out acronyms was a challenge. That’s where the phonetic alphabet comes into play

By now, almost everyone uses the NATO phonetic alphabet. It’s the most recognized in the world. The US joint Army/Navy version varies a bit but does have a lot of similarities. However, when I first started out using the NATO version quite a few callers didn’t know what Lima was or giggled when I said Tango.

I decided that some people have much more familiarity with first names. This was borne out when I kept using Mary for “M” instead of Mike. People immediately knew it. Same for Victor, Peter, and so on. So I cobbled together my own Name Phonetic Alphabet.

A – Adam
B – Barbara
C – Charlie
D – David
E – Edward
F – Frank
G – George
H – Harold
I – Irwin
J – John
K – Kevin
L – Larry
M – Mary
N – Nancy
O – Oliver
P – Peter
Q – Quincy (or queen)
R – Roger
S – Sam
T – Tom (my favorite)
U – Umbrella
V – Victor
W – William
X – X-Ray
Y – Yellow
Z – Zebra

Finding a name for Y and Z was pretty difficult, but everyone knows Yellow and Zebra. I was tempted to use Zander, but the more popular version of that name from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was spelled Xander. No sense confusing folks. As for X, if you don’t know X from the sound we need to have a chat.

Was it a duplication of effort? Certainly. But it works universally with everyone I’ve ever talked to, including children. It makes “Roger Adam Irwin David” easy to get across to people without trying to remember Romeo and India.

The key to communication with others is to find something that works for you.  If you can easily convey your information to someone else, the shortcuts you take don’t matter.  If first names work best, use them.  If drawing pictures works better, use those.  In the end, getting the point across is the goal.