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06/05/2005 Entry: "AoA -- "Age of Acronyms""

Let's face it, we live with lots of Acronyms. Some of these acronyms are convenient abbreviations. Who has time to write out "United States of Amer . . . " -- I'm tired out already. Other acronyms are simple bad English: "C U 2 nite." Let's not be prudes; sometimes bad English is OK. I know there are some who are sure that bad spelling, and sloppy linguistic shortcuts will cause society to fall, but it won't. Trust me, it won't.

But there is an odd thing I've discovered. Some Acronyms are not really acronyms because they don't literally stand for anything. For example URS no longer stands for anything since the company outgrew the original name. SQL doesn't really stand for "Structured Query Language"; it doesn't stand for anything except the name of a database language. I expect these false and orphaned acronyms will only become more common.

Curiously looking up SQL on acronymfinder.com gave in the results for SQL not only "Structured Query Language (database query languages)", and "Standard Query Language (less common)", but also "Long-Finned Squid (FAO species code)." Now how this works I can't imagine. And what does "FAO" stand for?

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