Nicknames and Acronyms

From Michael:

July 8, 2008

In the military, we love acronyms. In fact, we use so many three-letter acronyms that we even have a three-letter acronym for “three-letter acronym”; TLA. We also like nicknames and callsigns. Nicknames are common anytime you get a large group of males forced together under challenging circumstances. For those of you who have played team sports, you understand this point. In the military, nicknames and callsigns serve various purposes. Sometimes, a guy’s last name is so long that it is abbreviated for ease of pronunciation. People with Slavic last names, which typically have at least one or more “z” and “y”, are usually just called “alphabet”. From the military perspective, callsigns serve several tactical purposes. It is easier to identify someone quickly based on their callsign than by last name, especially if they have a common last name. It also serves the purpose of not giving away the identity of the person to the enemy. Our unit has as its mascot a Cherokee Indian. Therefore, our unit’s callsign is Cherokee. Like most military organizations, our unit is then broken down into subordinate units, listed alphabetically. We use the phonetic alphabet to get Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. Well, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie are kind of plain vanilla, so we like to add personality. Take your lettered companies like A, B, C, W, etc., and assign Native American tribes, and you end up with names like Apache, Blackfoot, Comanche, etc.

Certain personalities also get callsigns. One of our officers is “Hawkeye”. I’m not sure why, and I don’t think it has to do with the character from M*A*S*H*. Our civil affairs officer, who is responsible for shaking hands and kissing babies with the locals, and, more importantly, coordinating humanitarian projects with them such as building schools and such, is “Welldigger”. Get it? He digs wells, etc. We have a young Marine who has been disciplined so many times, that his nickname reflects his colored past, “NJP”. NJP stands for non-judicial punishment. It basically means that you get disciplined without going to a court-martial. It’s kind of like paying a fine instead of going to court. NJP is actually a good kid, but he has a bit of a speaking-before-thinking problem. My nickname/callsign is “Judge”. This is a common nickname for the lawyer, because my actual title is Battalion Staff Judge Advocate, or SJA for short. That’s too many syllables, so most prefer Judge. One or two call me “JAG”, which is technically inaccurate, because Marine lawyers are not called JAGs, as they are in the other branches of the military. We call ourselves Judge Advocates. The common mistake that many make is assuming that I am an actual judge, which of course, I am not. But they don’t need to know that, and I like the intimidation factor that being a judge provides. Military language also has its quirks. If someone is trying to make a point, and they want to confirm that their audience understands them, it is not uncommon to hear the speaker ask: “Are you buying what I’m selling?” or better yet “Are you smelling what I’m pooping?” How lovely.

Finally, we have also resorted to nicknaming inanimate objects. Here are some of my favorites. We call the large 7-ton truck that has a passenger carrier in the back an “armadillo”, because it looks like a large shell on the back. We call our rifles “pea-shooters” or “boomsticks”. We call sneakers “go fasters” (i.e. they make you go faster). We call any kind of sweetened drink like Kool Aid or such “bug juice” because the sugar attracts bugs. Instead of shaving, we call it “scraping your face”. And finally, my favorite, the “honeypot”. The honeypot is the cylindrical container that sits inside of our outhouse and collects our waste deposits. I am quite certain that honeypot is meant to be a misnomer, but I get a chuckle everytime some poor young soul is ordered to go clean the honeypots. Cleaning is a very loose term in this regard, as it entails dousing the contents of the honeypot with gasoline and tossing in a lit match. As a father of 3, everytime I hear the word “honeypot”, I think of Winnie the Pooh, an image that will forever remain tainted by my time in the Marine Corps.