din 5009

The Institute for German Standardisation (Deutsches Institut für Normung) has been urging for the reform of the Sprachraum’s radio spelling alphabet (with the DIN assignment above, see previously) for some time. Though lobbying efforts yielded a major overhaul in the mid 1960s to make the official version less gendered and jingoistic, there are choice relics in it such as S wie (as in) Siegfried instead of Samuel as it originally was, Nordpol rather than Nathan, Otto for Oscar or Dora over David to eliminate names that could be construed as Jewish. Though the protocols are still being debated and the civil German use is a bit more improvised than its counterparts (p wie pseudonym), the consensus now to not let the Nazis have the last word is to use city names—W wie Wiesbaden statt Wilhelm, A wie Augsburg statt Anton.