What's the Worst Acronym You've Ever Heard?

mmaddox asks: "As a software developer, I've consulted on many projects - projects conceived in the twisted mind of management and marketing and cursed with bizarre, often hysterically funny names. Of course, these names lead to the adoption of the dreaded acronym. Most recently, I've discouraged the name selections of a few clients, in particular, the Private Inline Security System (a silly "personal firewall" - the client didn't even THINK of using an acronym) and Cross-section Heads-Up Digitizer (an engineering bit for roadway construction - anyone remember the movie?). There must be millions of these things out there. What is the worst acronym you've ever had the *ahem* pleasure of dealing with?" And in typical Slashdot fashion, it just wouldn't be the same without taking a dig at Microsoft. If you click here and look at the #2 result (of 44), then you may see one of funniest acronyms I've ever seen come out of the corporate culture. Of course, if you click on that particular link it looks like someone at the Borg have recognized their error and is trying to rewrite history, changing the "tool" into a "utility". God bless the Google cache! If you think you've seen acronyms to beat this one, please share!

Comments

acronym for acronyms

[cassidyc]

I;ve been working on a tool for our product. The tools it called CTE (an acronym for Component Template Extensions) Now the ironic thing is that the tools was originally called "acronyms"

Hence we now have a acronym for acronyms

Doh

CJC

Telephone Network Administration

[battjt]

Telephone Network Administration, but everyone used the acronym without cracking a smile. Of course I laughed out loud on a teleconference. I no longer work there.

Joe

Re:Telephone Network Administration

[CokeBear]

Tits and Ass!

A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.

[wls]

Alphabetic Collection for Reducing Or Numbing Your Memory

Joke suggestion that got used

[Goose In Orbit]

I used to work at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham (UK) on their Laboratory system software. We wrote a rule-based system for the Liver Unit, which I labelled LUMPS (for Liver Unit Management Protocol System)

The name stuck... and when the Renal Unit wanted a similar system, LUMPS begat RUMPS.

At the time I left there was also talk of a system for the Maternity Unit - no prizes for guessing the acronym - but I don't think it never got used (the negative disease link probably didn't help), which was a shame because it also happened to be the name of the language the system was written in...

Business Functional Document

[dmorin]

When I first joined the team, hired by a friend of mine, we established what documentation would be used to define software projects. We came up with the "Business Functional Document", or BFD, which hopefully everybody knows also stands for "big f'ing deal". he got the expression into exactly *1* meeting before a marketing guy said "You can't call it that." Oh, well.

Just today I learned that my group is called Application Architecture, or AA for short. "Hi, my name's Duane, and I'm an architect." "Hi, Duane!!" I'm seriously thinking about calling my first white paper the 12 steps to web services.

True story that's not a bad acronym but we find it funny -- we used to be on Shared Enterprise Applications, or SEA. That group got disbanded and we are now Application Engineering Services, or AES -- SEA backwards. So the joke is that our mission statement is to do the exact opposite of what we did 6 months ago.

"Four S Club"

[dmorin]

Professor of mine told me the story about having to travel to a conference on the Statistics and Science for Social Studies, or "Four S" for short. He called the hotel to confirm his registration for the Four S meeting, and they asked for his credit card, which he gave them. after he hung up he thought that weird, because he had already given them the credit card once before. So he called back to check and asked if he was confirmed for the right conference. They said absolutely, he was all booked for the Society for Statistical Sexual Studies.

Swear to god. He said he had to seriously think about which conference he wanted to attend.

funny acronyms

[rm-r]

From Red Dwarf IIRC: the Commitee for the Liberation of Intergalactic Terryfying Organisms and their Re-integration Into Society?

SHIN

[Nos.]

The Saskatchewan Gov't (that's in Canada) is working on a project called SHIN. Sask Health Information Network. Basically, getting everyones medical records onto a large database so an individuals records are available anywhere in the province. In any case, the Priemere at the time, Roy Romanow, referred to it as Sask Health Information Technology System.

POS

[Pentagon13]

My first day at work I was given a polo shirt with the company logo in the breast area along with the name of our product, followed by "The Proven POS System". Since I was fresh out of college and not terribly bright, I automatically assumed that POS stood for Piece Of Shit instead of Point Of Sale. All I could think about is why on earth would they call their system a Piece Of Shit .. that is, until I figured out what it really stood for. I still can't bring myself to actually wear the shirt though.

A couple of my favourites

[Nik]

PCMCIA - People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms

PENCIL and PAPER - Plotter, Encoder, Notator, for Ciphers, Icons and Letters, for use with a Passive Accumulative Permanent/Erasable Raster.

N

As usual, the military's responsible for this one

[Raetsel]

There are various types of officers in the military... Flag officers, Field Grade officers, etc. The Navy has (in addition to numerous other classifications) LDOs, or Limited Duty Officers.

So, courtesy of the United States Navy's Naval Nuclear Power Training Command (NNPTC), I offer you the...

• Direct Input Limited Duty Officer, or DILDO

I have to assume that they didn't acronym-ize it right off when they chose the name, they aren't that dense. It went into actual use, and there were some affected officers who were genuinely offended by the acronym. It caused the whole title to be changed very quickly.

Funny database name...

[AtariDatacenter]

In our environment, the acronyms for test databases always start with a T and the acronym for production databases always start with a P. This was fine when then TENIS (electronic number inventory system) database was in development. Cute name, right?

Well, when they were putting it into production, they realized that they had a problem. Management decided to change the name to PNIS. Unfortunately, they didn't take into account how people would pronounce that, either. :)

Leave it to the Govt.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, most dealings between the federal government and it's suppliers are covered by a series of rules called the Federal Acquisition Regulations. When I was in the Air Force, everyone in our unit was required to take a basic course in the regs. The course, of course, was called the Federal Acquisition Regulations Training, or FAR Training. That quickly got shortened, so it wasn't unusual to have a manager ask, "When are you scheduled to FART?" or "Have you done FART?"

Courtesy of Red Dwarf...

[sab39]

Campaign for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society.

Political parties fall to this problem, too.

[mfarah]

In my country (Chile), some ten years ago, one of the then fragmented socialist-marxist left wing sectors formed the "Partido Amplio de Izquierda Socialista" (meaning roughly "Ample Left-Wing Socialist Party"; "PAIS" means "country"). They had to add the "amplio" ("ample") word, because the initial name "Partido de Izquierda Socialista" didn't have a good acronym ("PIS" means "urine").

They were, of course, the butt of jokes for this (after all, the inclusion of "Amplio" was notoriously forced). It was said that they handled other alternative names, like "Partido de la Izquierda CHilena Independiente" or "Partido de la Izquierda Popular Independiente" (more acronyms meaning urine).

Thank God that party didn't last long...

WinCE

[Imabug]

Windows Compact Edition
WinCE

From Webster's dictionary
wince: To shrink or start involuntarily, as in pain or distress

Canadian Politics

[Stavr0]

When the Reform Party, headed by Preston Manning went thru some changes, decided to rename themselves, they went thru some difficulties finding a new name.
For a while they were called Canadian Reform/Alliance Party

not very technical

[gtx]

i was playing frisbee one day, and this kid brought a frisbee in that had "Canadian Ultimate National Team" written on it. now, as i understand it, the team is really called the Canadian National Ultimate Team, however, the (unintentional?) switching of the two middle words made for an amusing acronym

-c

I'm sterile and pee and tell.

[NewWazoo]

I work for a research lab at FSU (that's Florida State Univ) that does work with the FL Dept. of Transportation.

The name of our research lab? The "Information Processing and Transmission Engineering Laboratory". Or the IPTEL. Or the I-P-and-TEL.

How about our DOT branch office? Well, it used to be the Signals and Traffic Engineering Research Lab. Or the STERL, pronounced "sturl". We all called it the "sterile". They've since dropped the S, so it's the TERL.

Just my little bit.

Brandon
(NewWazoo)
Proud member or STERL, IPandTEL.

Re:PCMCIA

[Colin Bayer]

Also from acronymfinder:

VERONICA

Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-Wide Index to Computer Archives

Not an acronym, but...

[Ellen Ripley]

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we used to have a cable TV provider called Prime Cable. It didn't take too long to start calling them Crime Cable.

Naturally we were disappointed when we heard they were being bought out. I mean, what were the odds that the new company would have a name as easy to make fun of as Crime Cable?

Thank you, Cox!

Ellen

A local college name....

[namtro]

up until a few years ago it was simply "Friends University of Central Kansas," now they're just "Friends University"

Re:Hard to beat the military...

[david duncan scott]

"High Mobility Multi-Wheel Vehicle"? Is this so you don't confuse it with the Assault Unicycle?

College IT Acronyms

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first arrived at University, our college ( dorm to those in the US ) was just putting network connections to every room. The students responsible for the planning and design were the Group for Information Technology Solutions, or GITS.

So I end becoming the only freshman member of the GITS. After the network was installed and stable, the GITS no longer had a reason for existing.

What was needed was a new "committee" ( like the Sports Committee ) to police the shiny new network, and the resource room ( share computers ). Since all the other GITS had left, I got thrown in as the head of the new committee. In the spirit of the old names, we decided to call it the Network And Resource room Committee, or NARC.

I haven't been back the the building in years, but I hear the name is still used

Archive search system group

[miratim]

My company uses three letter acronyms to designate groups of modules. Each module in a group is then named in the form "XXXYYYY.cxx", where XXX is the group acronym, and YYYY is a four letter word, which theoretically describes the purpose of the module The archive search system is one of my favorites. Especially the archive dump module, or ASSDUMP.

CONDOM: Catholic women's college

[ralfp]

Colllege of Notre Dame of Maryland

an all-girl's Catholic collge