# Acronyms and initialisms in history **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 9, 2024, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839 "2024-01-09T18:08:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2024, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/41 "2024-01-13T20:40:19Z")
This seems fishy, but nobody has mentioned it yet: > The dominant language of the early Church was Greek, and in Greek the phrase “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” produced the acronym ICHTHYS, the Greek word for fish. A Christian poem of the second century spells the word with the first letters of each line. Acronyms that produce recognizable words seems to be a common idea. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/42 "2024-01-17T01:11:52Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve heard that the National Biscuit Company was the first, though then you have to define whether it counts as an acronym, since they used the first two letters of each word. Well the first three letters of the second word, but who’s counting. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/43 "2024-01-17T02:02:40Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > > [@Chronos](#): > > > > I’ve heard that the National Biscuit Company was the first, though then you have to define whether it counts as an acronym, since they used the first two letters of each word. > > Well the first three letters of the second word, but who’s counting I don’t know about anyone else, but I have no problem considering constructions with more than one letter from each word to be an acronym. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/44 "2024-01-17T02:23:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > > [@dtilque](#): > > > > also during the late 19th century, large corporations arose and they were sometimes refered to by their acronym. I haven’t looked into which one was the earliest, but I would guess one of the railroads. > > I’ve heard that the National Biscuit Company was the first Insurance Company of North America, called INA, was founded in **1792** , and started out offering “fire insurance” to people in Philadelphia (apparently they were novel in insuring the contents of a building in addition to the structure itself). It’s not entirely clear to me if they were always referred to as INA, but it’s what the company is usually called. [Insurance Company of North America - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Company_of_North_America#:~:text=Insurance%20Company%20of%20North%20America%20(INA)%20is%20the%20oldest%20stock,founded%20in%20Philadelphia%20in%201792). ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/45 "2024-01-17T04:49:32Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > First time it is used in the article, you use the full words. Afterwards, you use the initials. Yes, of course. But people rarely if ever do that anymore. It’s certainly sketchy on the Dope. I wonder when in initialism history we stopped spelling things out when first using initials? I think it was a 21st century thing where it exploded with the use of smart phones. And at some point people started thinking, “Gee, if I know that acronym, everybody else must!” ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/46 "2024-01-17T09:58:51Z")
The [Dutch East India Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company) or _Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie_ was the world’s first joint stock company. It was universally known as the VOC, and those initials were plastered over a lot of their stuff. The wikipedia article cites a credible assessment that the classic VOC logo was probably the first globally recognised corporate logo. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/47 "2024-01-17T12:41:15Z")
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA has a collection of Dutch East India stuff, all with the VOC logo on it. (Salem had an extensive trade with Asia, which they’d rather you remember about the city, rather than that unfortunate business with the witches. Hence the VOC stuff.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/48 "2024-01-17T17:16:06Z")
Because there _are_ some acronyms that not “everybody else” but most people in the writer’s audience know. I doubt people go around writing Federal Bureau of Investigation or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when the FBI or NAACP first come up in an article, post, email, etc. Where I work, there’s a strict “use the words the first time” policy in our writing (and our job is churning out writing!) but everybody 😉 looks the other way when Deoxyribonucleic Acid comes up. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839/49 "2024-01-17T17:33:17Z")
There’s also royal ciphers - those ER (and now, CR) common on things like British mail boxes etc. Generally they are clever arrangement or intertwining of initials, but the point is they use the first letters, of say, _James Rex_ (JR) for James II in the late 1600’s, or _George Rex_ (GR) for George I in the early 1700’s. The old-timey folks were not unaware of lead letters standing for whole words. > **[Royal Cyphers](https://britishroyalfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Royal_Cyphers)** > > Royal Cyphers are used to distinguish which monarch was reining at the time of something. They can mostly be seen on post-boxes and phone-boxes across the UK. Coins [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acronyms-and-initialisms-in-history/995839.md?page=2)