A spelling alphabet, radio alphabet, or telephone alphabet is a set of words which are used to stand for the letters of an alphabet

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...

. Each word in the spelling alphabet typically replaces the name of the letter with which it starts (acrophony

Acrophony

Acrophony is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spelled with the respective letters: ....

). It is used to spell out words when speaking to someone not able to see the speaker, meaning there are no visual cues which assist the listener. Giving one's name over the telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

 is a common scenario where a spelling alphabet is often used. Spelling alphabets are often called phonetic alphabets. These are not to be confused with phonetic transcription

Phonetic transcription

Phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds . The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, e.g., the International Phonetic Alphabet....

 systems, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

, which are designed to record detailed information about the sounds of human speech.

Voice procedure

Spelling alphabets are especially useful when speaking in a noisy environment when clarity and promptness of communication is essential, for example during two-way radio

Two-way radio

A two-way radio is a radio that can both transmit and receive , unlike a broadcast receiver which only receives content. The term refers to a personal radio transceiver that allows the operator to have a two-way conversation with other similar radios operating on the same radio frequency...

 communication between an aircraft pilot and air traffic control

Air traffic control

Air traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...

, or in military operations. Whereas the names of many letters sound alike, the set of replacement words can be selected to be as distinct from each other as possible, to minimise the likelihood of ambiguity or mistaking one letter for another. For example, if a burst of static

Noise (radio)

In radio reception, noise is the superposition of white noise and other disturbing influences on the signal, caused either by thermal noise and other electronic noise from receiver input circuits or by interference from radiated electromagnetic noise picked up by the receiver's antenna...

 cuts off the start of an English-language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 utterance of the letter J, it may be mistaken for A or K. In the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet known as the IACO or NATO phonetic alphabet, the sequence J-A-K would be pronounced Juliet-Alpha-Kilo. Some voice procedure standards require number

Number

A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....

s to be spelled out digit

Numerical digit

A digit is a symbol used in combinations to represent numbers in positional numeral systems. The name "digit" comes from the fact that the 10 digits of the hands correspond to the 10 symbols of the common base 10 number system, i.e...

 by digit, so some spelling alphabets replace confusable digit names with more distinct alternatives; for example, the NATO alphabet has "niner" for 9 to distinguish it better from 5 and the German word "nein".

History

As early as the 19th century, British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 signaller

Signaller

In the armed forces, a signaller or signaleer is a specialist soldier or seaman or airman responsible for military communications. Signallers, aka Combat Signallers or signalmen or women, are commonly employed as radio or telephone operators, relaying messages for field commanders at the front line...

s used a partial spelling alphabet. First recorded in 1904 this system at first differentiated only letters most frequently misunderstood: Ack Beer (or Bar) C D E F G H I J K L Emma N O Pip Q R Esses Toc U Vic W X Y Z. This alphabet was the origin of phrases such as "ack-ack" (A.A. for anti-aircraft), "pip-emma" for pm

PM

PM often means "after noon" in the 12-hour clock .PM or Pm may also refer to:-Sciences:*Particulate matter, particulates — fine dust and soot — suspended in the air...

 and Toc H

Toc H

Toc H is an international Christian movement. The name is an abbreviation for Talbot House, 'Toc' signifying the letter T in the signals spelling alphabet used by the British Army in World War I. A soldiers' rest and recreation centre named Talbot House was founded in December 1915 at Poperinghe,...

 for Talbot House. It was developed on the Western Front

Western Front (World War I)

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...

 of the First World War and later formally codified to provide a phonetic equivalent for all 26 letters (see comparative tabulation of military alphabets before 1956).

For the general populace, and finance professionals in particular, entries such as "November" for the letter N and "Kilo" for the letter K were considered too long or obscure, and an alternative alphabet arose. Common first names were a popular choice, and as a result the First Name Alphabet, first compiled by the financial firm JSC, has become quite commonly used.

Examples

The following examples are from various languages and time periods:.

Letter	NATO & Aviation NATO phonetic alphabet The NATO phonetic alphabet, more accurately known as the NATO spelling alphabet and also called the ICAO phonetic or spelling alphabet, the ITU phonetic alphabet, and the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet...	US Financial Financial services Financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are credit unions, banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies,...	British Forces British Armed Forces The British Armed Forces are the armed forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.Also known as Her Majesty's Armed Forces and sometimes legally the Armed Forces of the Crown, the British Armed Forces encompasses three professional uniformed services, the Royal Navy, the...  1952	RAF 1942–43 RAF phonetic alphabet Following the take up of radio, the British Royal Air Force used a succession of radiotelephony spelling alphabets to aid communication. These have now all been superseded by the NATO phonetic alphabet....	LAPD LAPD phonetic alphabet The LAPD phonetic alphabet is a spelling alphabet, similar to the ICAO spelling alphabet, that is used by the Los Angeles Police Department and other local and state law enforcement agencies across the state of California and elsewhere in the United States...	French French alphabet The French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures.-Letter names:- Diacritics :...	German (DIN 5009)	Dutch Dutch alphabet The modern Dutch alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and is used for the Dutch language. Five letters are vowels and 21 letters are consonants.- History :...	Italian Italian alphabet The Italian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used by the Italian language.-Vowels:The Italian alphabet has five vowel letters, ⟨a e i o u⟩. Of those, only ⟨a⟩ represents one sound value while each of the others has two...	Spanish	Swedish Swedish alphabet Modern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....	Danish/Norwegian Danish and Norwegian alphabet The Danish and Norwegian alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 and 1955 , although Danish did not officially recognize the W as a separate letter until 1980....	Finnish Finnish alphabet The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...	Turkish Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...	Portuguese Portuguese alphabet The Portuguese alphabet, , consists of the following 23 or 26 Latin letters:In addition, the following characters with diacritics are used: Áá, Ââ, Ãã, Àà, Çç, Éé, Êê, Íí, Óó, Ôô, Õõ, Úú. These are not, however, treated as independent letters in collation, nor do they have entries of their own in...
A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...	Alpha	Adam	Able	Apple	Adam	Anatole	Anton	Anna	Ancona	Antonio	Adam	Alfa	Aarne	Aydın	Avião
B B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:...	Bravo	Bob	Baker	Beer	Boy	Berthe	Berta	Bernard	Bologna	Barcelona	Bertil	Bravo	Bertta	Bekir	Bola
C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...	Charlie	Carol	Charlie	Charlie	Charles	Célestin	Cäsar	Cornelis	Como	Carmen	Caesar	Charlie	Celsius	Cemal	Casa
Ch Ch (digraph) Ch is a digraph in the Roman alphabet and Uyghur. It is treated as a letter of its own in Chamorro, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Igbo, Quechua, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. In Vietnamese, it also used to be considered a letter for collation purposes but this is no...	-	-	-	-	-	-	Charlotte	-	-	Chocolate	-	-	-	-	-
D D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the...	Delta	David	Dog	Dog	David	Désiré	Dora	Dirk	Domodossola	Dolores	David	Delta	Daavid	Deniz	Dado
E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:...	Echo	Eddie	Easy	Edward	Edward	Eugène	Emil	Eduard	Empoli	Enrique	Erik	Echo	Eemeli	Engin	Elefante
F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club...	Foxtrot	Frank	Fox	Freddy	Frank	François	Friedrich	Ferdinand	Firenze	Francia	Filip	Foxtrot	Faarao	Fener	Faca
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...	Golf	George	George	George	George	Gaston	Gustav	Gerard	Genova	Gerona	Gustav	Golf	Gideon	Gazi	Gato
H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....	Hotel	Harry	How	Harry	Henry	Henri	Heinrich	Hendrik	Hotel	Historia	Helge	Hotel	Heikki	Halat	Homem
I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...	India	Ike	Item	In	Ida	Irma	Ida	Izaak	Imola	Inés	Ivar	India	Iivari	İstif	Igreja
J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...	Juliet	Jim	Jig	Jug / Johnny	John	Joseph	Julius	Julius	I lunga	José	Johan	Juliet	Jussi	Jale	Jacaré
K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA....	Kilo	Kenny	King	King	King	Kléber	Kaufmann	Karel	Kappa	Kilo	Kalle	Kilo	Kalle	Kilo	Kilo
L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...	Lima	Larry	Love	Love	Lincoln	Louis	Ludwig	Lodewijk	Livorno	Lorenzo	Ludvig	Lima	Lauri	Liman	Laranja
Ll Ll Ll/ll is a digraph which occurs in several natural languages.-In English:In English, ll represents the same sound as single l:...	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Llobregat	-	-	-	-	-
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water...	Mike	Mary	Mike	Mother	Mary	Marcel	Martha	Maria	Milano	Madrid	Martin	Mike	Matti	Merih	Maria
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...	November	Nancy	Nan	Nuts	Nora	Nicolas	Nordpol	Nico	Napoli	Napoli	Niklas	Niklas	Niilo	Neptün	Navio
Ñ Ñ Ñ is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet, formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet, Aragonese old alphabet , Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet and the Guarani alphabet, where it represents...	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Ñoño	-	-	-	-	-
O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a...	Oscar	Oliver	Oboe	Orange	Ocean	Oscar	Otto	Otto	Otranto	Oviedo	Olof	Oscar	Otto	Oruç	Ovo
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words...	Papa	Peter	Peter	Peter	Paul	Pierre	Paula	Pieter	Padova	París	Petter	Papa	Pekka	Pilot	Pato
Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones...	Quebec	Quincy	Queen	Queen	Queen	Quintal	Quelle	Quotiënt	Quadro	Querido	Quintus	Quebec	Kuu	-	Queijo
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R...	Romeo	Roger	Roger	Roger / Robert	Robert	Raoul	Richard	Rudolf	Roma	Ramón	Rudolf	Romeo	Risto	Roket	Rato
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent...	Sierra	Sam	Sugar	Sugar	Sam	Suzanne	Samuel	Simon	Savona	Sábado	Sigurd	Sierra	Sakari	Süngü	Sapo
Sch	-	-	-	-	-	-	Schule	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
ß ß In the German alphabet, ß is a letter that originated as a ligature of ss or sz. Like double "s", it is pronounced as an , but in standard spelling, it is only used after long vowels and diphthongs, while ss is used after short vowels...	-	-	-	-	-	-	Eszett	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...	Tango	Thomas	Tare	Tommy	Tom	Thérèse	Theodor	Teunis	Torino	Tarragona	Tore	Tango	Tyyne	Türk	Tatu
U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....	Uniform	Uncle	Uncle	Uncle	Union	Ursule	Ulrich	Utrecht	Udine	Ulises	Urban	Uniform	Urho	Ulu	Uva
Ü Ü Ü, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...	-	-	-	-	-	-	Übermut	-	-	-	Übel	-	-	-	-
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....	Victor	Vincent	Victor	Vic	Victor	Victor	Viktor	Victor	Venezia	Valencia	Viktor	Victor	Vihtori	Vatan	Vaca
W W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V...	Whiskey	William	William	William	William	William	Wilhelm	Willem	Washington	Washington	Wilhelm	Whiskey	Wiski	-	Whisky
X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic...	X-ray	Xavier	X-ray	X-ray	X-ray	Xavier	Xanthippe	Xanthippe	Ics, Xeres	Xiquena	Xerxes	X-ray	Äksä	-	Xícara
IJ	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	IJmuiden	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Y Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound...	Yankee	Yogi	Yoke	Yoke / Yorker	Yellow	Yvonne	Ypsilon	Ypsilon	York, yacht	Yegua	Yngve	Yankee	Yrjö	Yavuz	York
Z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...	Zulu	Zachary	Zebra	Zebra	Zebra	Zoé	Zacharias	Zaandam	Zara	Zaragoza	Zäta	Zulu	Tseta	Zeybek	Zebra
Æ Æ Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Ægir/Ærlig	-	-	-
Ø Ø Ø — minuscule: "ø", is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Southern Sami languages.It's mostly used as a representation of mid front rounded vowels, such as ø œ, except for Southern Sami where it's used as an [oe] diphtong.The name of this letter is the same as the sound...	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Ødis/Ørnulf/Østen	-	-	-
Å Å Å represents various sounds in several languages. Å is part of the alphabets used for the Alemannic and the Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German...	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	Åke	Åse/Ågot	Åke	-	-
Ä Ä "Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...	-	-	-	-	-	-	Ärger	-	-	-	Ärlig	-	Äiti	-	-
Ö Ö "Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...	-	-	-	-	-	-	Ökonom	-	-	-	Östen	-	Öljy	-	-

Greek

The Greek spelling alphabet is a spelling alphabet (or "phonetic alphabet") for Greek, i.e. a set of names given to the alphabet letters for the purpose of spelling out words. It is used by the Greek army, the navy and the police.

See also Russian spelling alphabet

Russian spelling alphabet

The Russian spelling alphabet is a spelling alphabet for Russian, i.e. a set of names given to the alphabet letters for the purpose of spelling out words. It is used by the Russian army, navy and the police.-Alphabet:-See also:...

.

External links

• Phonetic/spelling Alphabets for various languages from Brian Kelk's website
• Telephone alphabets (14 languages).