Code Name - Military Origins

Military Origins

In the First World War, code names common to the Allies referring to nations, cities, geographical features, military units, military operations, diplomatic meetings, places, and individual persons were agreed upon, adapting pre-war naming procedures in use by the governments concerned. In the British case code names were administered and controlled by ISSB (The Inter-Services Security Board) staffed by the War Office with the word list generated and randomised by GC&CS (later GCHQ). This procedure was coordinated with the USA when America entered the war. Random lists of code names were issued to users in alphabetical blocks of ten words and were selected as required. Code words became available for re-use after six months and unused allocations could be re-assigned at discretion and according to need. Capricious selection from the available allocation could result in clever meanings and result in an aptronym or backronym although policy was to select words that had no obviously deducible connection with what they were supposed to be concealing. Those for the major conference meetings had a partial naming sequence referring to devices or instruments which had an ordinal number as part of their meaning, e.g. the third meeting was "TRIDENT." Joseph Stalin, whose last name means "man of steel", was given the code name "GLYPTIC," meaning "an image carved out of stone."

• Reference: Glossary of Code Names from U.S. Army in World War II - Washington Command Post: The Operations Division
• WWII Allied Operations
• Abbreviations, Acronyms, Codewords, Terms Appearing in WW II Histories and Documents
• Information from original files held at The National Archives formerly The Public Record Office which hold the publicly available records of central government for the UK