I’ll take “stuffy bureaucracy” for $200, Alex.
Speaking of “Cool Names” for the military, there was a story about an 7th Regiment Air Cav post in VietNam where the higher up decided letting the troopers name their base would improve morale. “Dien Bien Phu 2” as was “Little Big Horn the Sequel” were rejected as inappropriate. They went with “Masada” for a couple of months until someone told the higher brass about the Siege at Masada.
Viper is the official designation given to new build F16s, and the Air Force has given at least partial recognition to the name (e.g., Air Combat Command Viper Demonstration Team).
Unrelated: the UK MOD’s anti-tank missile is called Brimstone because it was originally a development of the US Hellfire (it was eventually spun off into an entirely new design).
I don’t think many of the new baseball names stuck. 
Japanese baseball is endearingly English, including the mystifying (to me, anyway) insistence on having English team names on uniforms.*
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- While universally true at the professional level, Japanese high school teams sometimes have Japanese script on their jerseys, it’s not consistent at that level, though of course in Japan, high school baseball is a huge deal.
Actually they have, especially in news. Picking a random story:
And a rough translation into English:
The only baseball term in that stirty which was taken from English is ドラフト for “draft”, while all the rest of the terms use native Japanese words.
(The other English loan word is イメージ for “image.”)
There are many loan words or partical loan words which are used, including プロ野球 (puro yakyuu) prefessional baseball, and in conversations so words such as “safe” and “out” are used while news accounts tend to use native words.
Nvm, wildly offtopic
I’m surprised none mentioned how we got the word Jeep, from GP (General Purpose)
Because it might not be true. It may have come from the Popeye character.
It isn’t true. G was a Ford code for defense products and P denoted an 80 inch wheelbase. Plus it would only have been known to those in procurement roles.
When I was very active in the AOL SD forum, I researched this question. I emailed the US Army Transportation Corps museum and asked for verification if the original name of the Jeep was “Truck 1/4 ton 4x4 GP”. A curator replied saying I was right until I got to the “GP”. It was never “GP”. I think it was maybe RS, but for reconnaissance/scout. It first came out with a big radio mounted on the back powered by the alternator/battery for the engine so it had a lot more range than those hand held walkie talkies.
Interviews with the test drivers who drove the 3 different candidates for the Army vehicle agreed that one driver after testing the Willys sample compared it to the new character in the Popeye cartoons, Eugene the Magical Jeep, who could walk up walls and across ceilings. The name “Jeep” stuck with the vehicle.
thank you for info, I stand corrected
Helicopters were frequently named after Indian tribes - AH-64, Apache, CH-47 Chinook, OH-58 Kiowa, RAH-66 Comanche, etc etc.
Which seems a bit odd IMHO.
Then again, sometimes they give them silly names like the HH-3E Jolly Green Giant or MD-6 Little Bird.
This is the US Army’s naming convention, so it wouldn’t apply to the HH-3E. The “Little Bird” is just a specific variant of the OH-6 Cayuse, so even that one has a tribe name. Sometimes variants have different names. For example, the AH-64E model is called a “Guardian” even though it’s just a variant of the Apache. There was also the The AH-1 Cobra that was developed from the UH-1 Iroquois.
Today, this naming convention is merely tradition, but it used to be an official policy, starting with the H-13 Sioux. Army Regulation 70-28 dtd. 1969, mandated that Army Aircraft required “Indian terms and names of American Indian tribes and chiefs”, with names provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Other rules for naming military equipment included:
Names must:
- Appeal to the imagination without sacrificing dignity.
- Suggest an aggressive spirit and confidence in the item’s capabilities.
- Reflect the item’s characteristics including mobility, agility, flexibility, firepower, and endurance.
- Be based on tactical application, not source or method of manufacture.
- Be associated with the preceding qualities and criteria if a person’s name is proposed.
Which tradition continues with what I believe is the Army’s newest type as of today:
Many experiments and prototypes and notional designs have been created in the ~20 years since the Lakota was born. So far IIRC none of those efforts have survived (yet) into series production.
If / When the Army eventually does field a new rotorcraft it’ll be interesting to see if they choose to continue the Native American (“NA”) naming.
The same NA naming also applied to Army fixed wing airplanes. In many cases they were in effect hand-me-downs or variants of models first built for and named by other services. But where the Army was the service of first use, NA names were the standard. E.g.