Techy: Phonetic Alphabet

I’ve just got off the phone with a company where I had to spell my surname: I’ve got quite a difficult to correctly spell surname so I often have to spell it out phonetically (the “a for alpha” business), but three-quarters through I realised I couldn’t remember what ‘W’ was for (it’s for whisky). Oops. Anyway, as an aid to my memory more than anything, here’s the phonetic alphabet that dates from around 1995 (and has been approved by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, International Telecommunications Union and the FAA – so it’s “quite official”):

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whisky Xray Yankee Zulu

The UK police sometimes use “Indigo” instead of “India” and the actual spellings of some of the words may vary – but since they are made to be said rather the spelt themselves, it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

In aviation, they also use the following phonetic digits mainly to avoid “conflicts” with other words and digits (“five” may be mistaken for “fire”, but fife won’t be):
zero one two tree fower fife six seven eight niner