Origin of Nomenclature
Although pronounced "Double-O", the O refers to zeros. In the British and Commonwealth armed forces, soldiers and officers are assigned identity numbers; the United States military does likewise. During Ian Fleming's work in Vichy France, an agent's anonymity was imperative, and, when the agent was military, it was convenient to use the last three digits of the agent's number as identification.
In World War II, Britain's Special Operations Executive agents did not have identifiers assigned to them such as the 00 or related 'systems' of nomenclature. Specific agents would be known to high command by their own names, and when deniability was at stake, their service numbers in long form, or else by invented codenames.
For the sake of romance and memorability, Fleming used the 00 and mystical number 7 for James Bond – himself a shell for the reader to inhabit.
Read more about this topic: 00 Agent
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“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)