What's in a name?

I've always done servicing, in all it's various forms, for work. Contact & call centres, marketing services, hospitality, client servicing. Never sales. Always servicing.

You learn quickly that when you deal with people, you need to get their names right. Servicing people have their own quirks. We spell based by country name. The entire alphabet, spelt out in country form.

F rance
I ndia
O saka
N orway
A merica

I always wondered why men, especially, seemed a little flustered when faced with this strange new way of spelling. For women - which populate three quarters of the servicing world - it seems like the most natural thing in the world. For men? I just put it down to our Singaporean men having gone through National Service and after spending 2 years in the military, they spell differently.

Boy, was I wrong.
I've just discovered that it is the OFFICIAL way to spell, dammit.

The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet.

Though often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets have no connection to phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet. Instead, the NATO alphabet assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically so that critical combinations of letters (and numbers) can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential.

It is used by many national and international organizations, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

I see.
So our local men have been using an internationally recognised phonetic spelling thingie. But it's so damned weird. As a professional service provider, if you spell by country, it's so impartial that you don't potentially offend anyone. And It's not so.... so... untidy!


F oxtrot
I ndia
O scar
N ovember
A lpha


Nah..... I'm sticking to my ways on this one :o