Right off I’ll just admit that I know nothing about what I’m about to talk about. I’m sure there are loads of books on the subject of naming products, using acronyms, etc and I haven’t read any of them. On the way home on my motorbike last night, though, I was thinking about model numbers and tyre descriptions and my mind sort of meandered down this path. So there, disclaimer completed.
Lots of products, software, techniques and various other things are named precisely for the purpose of having a good acronym. An easy to pronounce and remember, catchy acronym. Sometimes though if the acronym is too easy to pronounce and remember, then all that is remembered is the acronym. I find this at work a lot … people refer to things knowledgeably via the acronym, but if pressed actually can’t tell you what it stands for. Not to say that they don’t know what they’re talking about, just they can’t remember what the letters actually mean.
On the other hand, really great acronyms are easier to write, but never lose their meaning or the knowledge of the lengthened version. The particular example I was thinking of last night were related to the movies recently made of Tolkien’s classics …. if I write LOTR or ROTK, do you read that as “lot-R” or “Lord of the Rings”? “rot-k” or “Return of the King”?
I suppose the other side of this story is that sometimes people don’t actually care about the lengthened meaning — I’ve seen a number of acronyms that were blatantly invented to fit a cool sounding name. Of course now I can’t remember any of them but I know they’re out there.
So what do people think? Can you remember some examples of acronyms where you always read the acronym as the full name? Or the reverse? And where are all the examples of the made up acronyms to fit cool names that I could remember yesterday but not now?!?
Comments (6) Permalink
March 23rd, 2004 at 1:26 PM
Foobar (or rather, FUBAR), is one that a surprisingly large number of people, particularly those just starting out on the programming track, seem to use a lot without actually knowing what it stands for. Yeah, they understand (mostly) the appropriate context, but they don’t know what it actually means. At least, that’s my experience, anyway.
Foo and Bar seem to be increasingly common temporary variable names too, for some reason.
March 23rd, 2004 at 6:38 PM
The best acronym that springs readily to mind is “SLiME”: “Subsurface Lithotrophic Microbial Ecosystem”.
March 23rd, 2004 at 8:36 PM
SCUBA – Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
and
LASER – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
They must be good – I had to look both of them up
March 23rd, 2004 at 9:46 PM
How about “Pakistan”, which is actually an acronym for “Panjab, Afghania [i.e. North-West Frontier Province], Kashmir, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan, Afghanistan and BaluchistN”? Which I suppose is not just cheating on the “N” but which also betrays quite a lot of territorial ambition!
March 24th, 2004 at 10:08 AM
The worst one I’ve ever seen is one I have to use every day: IUATLD for ‘The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease’. As you can tell, founded in the 19th century, well before marketing techniques for charities included having a name people don’t just give up on half way through. I’m sure some people get as far as ‘Union’ and then say ‘sod it, let’s give the money to Oxfam instead’. (Oxford Famine Relief, I believe).
March 24th, 2004 at 1:05 PM
You just can’t beat TLAs and ETLAs. If ETLAs were called FLAs, then FLA wouldn’t be an FLA. I love it.
Glossary:
-> TLA: Three letter acronym
-> ETLA: Extended three letter acronym
-> FLA: Four letter acronym