Jean-Bruno Renard | Letters to Ambrose merton # 11, 1997

In March 1997, my friend and colleague, Frederic Monneyron, Professor of Comparative Literature at Universitie Stendhal, Grenoble, and an experienced globetrotter, sent me a little list which plays on the initials or names of airline companies. They are all in English and, in all probability, their invention has been spread over a period of thirty years.

• TAP (Transportos Aeros Portugues: Air Portugal): Take Another Plane.
• PIA (Pakistani International Airlines): “Please Inform Allah”.
• BOAC (British Overseas Aircraft Corporation): “Better On A Camel”.
• El Al (Israeli Airlines): “Every Landing Always Late”.
• SAS (Scandanavian Air System): “Sex And Sun”.
• Lufthansa (German Airlines): “Let Us Fuck The Hostesses As No Steward Available”.

If we regard these word plays as ironic, they can be seen as on the one hand critical of flight safety, of their speed and of their respect for timetables, and on the other hand as bawdy. The themes correspond to the popular image of aircraft, the black image of malfunction and danger, the rosy image of exotic eroticism. One finds these themes in narrative folklore, comic stories, rumours, contemporary legends. Airlines and the wordplay on initials share a common feature, they are international, a fact which is reinforced by their use of the language of world transportation, English.

This list set me thinking about “twisted initials” and here is the result.

To begin with some French examples.

• VFD (Vehicule Ferroviaire du Dauphine: a transport company): “Veritable Feraille Dauphinoise” (Grenoble, 1980-1990). A “ferraille” here means a vehicle ready for scrap. This play on the initials is known only in the region of France where these coaches operate.
• TATI (a chain of bargain stores): “Tous les Arabes Trainent Ici” (All the Arabs hang about here) or “Trop d’Arabes Trainent Ici” (Too many Arabs hang about here). This xenophobic wordplay alludes to the presence of North African workers in TATI shops.
• CRS (Compagnies Republicaines de Securite): “Camions/Cars Remplis des Singes” (Lorries/coaches full of monkeys). The CRS is a mobile police unit charged with maintaining public order. They are mainly involved with the surveillance of, and sometimes the repression of, street demonstrations. This twist expresses the classic disparaging attitude of the French people to police authority. The attitude was sometimes expressed in a tougher form in May 1968 with the slogan “CRS = SS”.
• PTT (Postes, Telegraphes et Telephone, French postal service): “Petit Travail Tranquille” (Quiet little job). A classic quip to mock the employees of PTT, who have the status of civil servants. (Date? The acronym PTT was introduced in 1899.)
• RATP (Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens, Paris regional transport authority): “Rentre Avec Tes Pieds” (Go home on foot). Heard in Paris in the 1960s, this gives comic expression to the irritation felt by Parisians in the face of bus and metro strikes.
• CD (Corps Diplomatique, the distinguishing letters appearing on the registration plates of cars driven by the staff of foreign embassies): “Cornichon Diplome”. In French, “cornichon” literally means a gherkin but it is used figuratively to mean idiot or imbecile. Thus this wordplay can be translated roughly as “Certified idiot”. A handy oath for drivers upset by the behaviour of cars with CD plates.
• URSS (Union des Republiques Socialistes Sovietique, in English, USSR): “Union Ratatinee des Saucissons Secs” (A shrivelled up union of dried sausages). This joke has given joy to several generations of French school children. I heard it myself in the 1950s. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, this joke is no doubt destined to disappear.

A play on initials was witnessed in the Second World War in Alsace, the region of France annexed by the Third Reich in 1941. Around 130,000 Alsatians were forced to wear German uniforms and serve in the Wehrmacht. These Alsatians turned NSDAP (National Sozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei) into “Nous Sommes Des Allemands Provisoire” (We are temporary Germans).

Another celebrated play on initials is that concerning the word Nylon. This new textile material was invented in 1937 by chemists from the firm Du Pont de Nemours. The discovery was made public in 1938. Here are two versions of the origin of the name. According to the first, the term was originally “no run”, then distorted phonetically in “nolen”, then “nolon” and finally “nylon”. According to the second version, which is more poetic, the word “nylon” was an acronym forded from the initials of the names of the wives of the chemists who worked to produce it: Nancy, Yvonne, Louella, Olivia, Nina. Whichever it is, the American people twisted “nylon” into the phrases “Now you lousy old Nippons” or “Now you lost old Nippons”. These twists were naturally the expression not only of a feeling of economic and technical victory, since nylon would replace the silk manufactured in the Far East, but also of a deeper anti-Japanese feeling which was very strong in the years up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The famous morse code signal of distress used throughout the world (three dots, three dashes, three dots) was chosen because of its extreme simplicity. It was not because it corresponded to the letters SOS in the morse alphabet and, not widely known, it was not until much later that it was translated as “Save Our Souls”.

The most recent manifestation of twisting initials as a folklore activity is in the naming of the “crews” of “writers” responsible for the graffiti appearing in the big cities of America and Europe in the 1970s. Here are a few examples:

In New York:

• CIA: “Crazy Inside Artists”.
• TNT: “The Nation’s Top”.

In Paris:

• BBC: “Bad Boys Crew”.
• COP: “Controle of Paris”.
• CRS: “Crew Return Style”.
• DCA: (Defense Contre Avions, Anti-aircraft defence): “Da Criminal Artists”.
• FBI: “Fabulous Bomb Inability”.
• MOS (Metal Oxide Semi-conductor): “Master Of Style”.
• MST (Maladies Sexuellement Transmissibles, Sexually transmitted diseases): “Massacre Sans Tronconneuse” (Massacre without a chainsaw).
• SAS “Sex And Shit”.
• SOS “Secret Of Style”.
• TCA (Taxe sur le Chiffre d’Affaires, Turnover tax): “The Chrome Angelz”.
• TSA (Technologie de Systemes Automatises): “The Stoned Angelz”.
• TVA (Taxe a la Valeur Ajoutee, in English, VAT): “The Vaginal Art”.

However, it must be stated that many of the initials used by these groups of “writers” do not correspond to acronyms already in existence. Consequently, it is possible that in some cases, the similarity between the initials used by a “crew” and a pre-existing acronym was simply a coincidence (for example, MOS, TCA or TSA, which are little known and little used acronyms, in contrast to BBC, FBI or MST). Note, by the way, the attraction to Parisian groups of American English, especially employing its slang, in imitation of American popular culture. Note too the appeal of three letter acronyms. As is well known, a ternary rhythm is common in folk products such as tales and songs.

Initials have been known since antiquity. The Hebrews, Greeks and above all the Romans often used abbreviations texts, public or private. Their misuse caused such difficulties in understanding that the emperor Justinian (5th Century A.D.) forbade their use in the Byzantine Empire. Today the abuse of abbreviations is proclaimed by the English expression “alphabet soup”. Specialists in ancient history have concluded that wrongly deciphered initials have caused errors in historical interpretation. It is now established that the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Boissard (1558-1602), who was one of the founders of epigraphy (the science of ancient inscriptions) completed in an erroneous manner numerous incomplete or abbreviated Latin inscriptions which he collected on Roman monuments in Italy.

There also exist anecdotes, real or legendary, about erroneous interpretations of pseudo-antique inscriptions, either made accidentally or provoked by deliberate hoaxers. Larousse’s Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX siecle recounts some in its article “Inscriptions”.

The Montmartre inscription merits a mention. It was an old block on which the following characters had been engraved:

CHEMI
NDESA
NES

An illustrious scholar, after much patient research, succeeded in producing this brilliant interpretation:
“Carmina Homeri et maronis illustrata nominibus ducum et scriptorum arte nullo exstinguentur saeculo”.
However, a local worthy took the block and read with ease:
“Chemin des anes” (Road for donkeys).

A mistake of the same kind was made by an archaeologist who came across an old crockery plate with the letters POMANS is large capitals. He judged its provenance to be Roman. In order to interpret the inscription, he believed it was necessary to add punctuation; P. O. MANS. S. This he deciphered as “Publii Ovidii manibus sacris” (To the sacred shades of Publius Ovidus). He was beside himself with joy to see, in our part of the world, a monument commemorating Ovid, the author of Metamorphoses. Imagine his mortification when he learned that this piece of pottery was quite simply manufactured in the Champagne region by a certain Monsieur Pomans.

One time, when a member of l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres was being examined, he was asked to be so good as to explain a curious little pot, elegant in form, and decorated with the letters M.J.D.D. in relief. The solution was readily apparent. This pot had without a doubt been consecrated to Jupiter and the four letters signified “Magni Jovi Deorum Deo” (To the great Jupiter, god of gods). “Good lord, no”, replied the hoaxer, “That should just read, Moutarde jaune de Dijon!” (Yellow Dijon mustard.)

A learned school was shown the copy of an inscription picked up, so it appeared, from an old Roman fountain. It looked like this:

RES
ER
VO
IR

The explanation is easy, said our scholar after a moment’s reflection. This was an abbreviated inscription which should be read thus: RESpublica ERigere VOluit ad IRrigandum. In other words; The Republic has decided to erect (this monument) for irrigation. Then it was pointed out to the scholar that if one were to read the inscription perpendicularly, one got the French (and indeed, English) word, RESERVOIR. But when did a scholar ever seek a simple interpretation?

With regard to abbreviation, without some knowledge of the background, initials are incomprehensible. No recourse to etymology helps to penetrate the secret of the meaning. The invention of a second meaning for the initials, a hidden message, fits a variety of motives. It may perhaps be a simple play on words intended to amuse. That is the case of the majority of twisted initials which one tells like a riddle, “Do you know what the initials […] stand for?” It may also be a play on words intended to create a secret recognition sign, for erxample, the initials of the “writer” groups in cities. This was no doubt the motivation for the early Christians when they invented the monogram for Christ “Ichthus”, which means “fish” in Greek but which is also the initials “Jesous Christos Theou Uios Soter” (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour).

I hope that this short note will encourage folklorists, amateur and professional, to collect “twisted initials” and explore this curious form of popular creation.

Note

Sandy Hobbs writes:

I have three points to add. The first is another suggestion I have heard as to the origin of the word “nylon”. Since it was developed as a result of the joint efforts of American and British scientists, it was decided to name it after the two major cities: New York, providing the NY, and London, providing the LON.

My second contribution is to recall, from the 1950s, the suggestion that the letters SPQR found on the standards of Roman legions did not stand for Senatus Populusque Romanus, the senate and people of Rome, as the textbooks claimed. The alternative explanation offered by my Latin teacher was “Small Profit, Quick Returns”, the Romans having been a nation of shopkeepers long before the British. I had the impression that this was an old joke.

Thirdly, may I suggest that “Massacre sans tronconneuse” for MST is a reference to the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre, known in France as Massacre a la Tronconneuse. If so, it must date from 1974 at the earliest.