A - alpha b- bravo c - charlie (NATO Phonetic Alphabet)

When ever I talk in phone to any Help Desk agent and when I want to communicate my First and Last Name to them, I always have hard time in abbreviating for each and every alphabet in my name. In fact I use to remember some abbreviation, but still I was not happy with abbreviation. I was looking from some perfect abbreviation.

The reason why I was looking for some good abbreviation was due to the few funny stories which I heard regarding this... In an incident one person used abbreviation like D-Dog and L-Lion in a important meeting where more than 20 person where attending. Most of the attendees where taken by laugh when they heard this. In another incidence when agent on other line asked to caller to spell the caller name Raj an (Name has been changed :-) ). Raj an started by telling R for Raj an. This also happened during important meeting and all the attendees in meeting started to laugh. And in another incidence a guy abbreviated B - Bush and person in other end of the call was an hardcore Democrat and he got irritated when he heard the name Bush. This incident happened during American Election time :-)...

So I started to search in net for the alphabet abbreviation which are widely used and which sounds decently and which are neutral in nature. I latter found NATO Phonetic Alphabet which is used widely by Army men and other person to pronounce and transmit the voice message containing important words in Radio and telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links. regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential.

This NATO phonetic abbreviation is widely used during communication thru phone and radio.
An alternative to this, "Western Union Phonetic Alphabet" is also used.

NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Letter	phonetic letter
A	Alpha
B	Bravo
C	Charlie
D	Delta
E	Echo
F	Foxtrot
G	Golf
H	Hotel
I	India
J	Juliet
K	Kilo
L	Lima
M	Mike
N	November
O	Oscar
P	Papa
Q	Quebec
R	Romeo
S	Sierra
T	Tango
U	Uniform
V	Victor
W	Whiskey
X	X-ray
Y	Yankee
Z	Zulu

Couple of links which talks in depth about NATO Phonetic abbreviations are

http://www.osric.com/chris/phonetic.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/radio/phonetic-alph/full/
http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/meyersde/kitchensink/alphabets/index.html

From here after I can be very comfortable when I abbreviate my Name to some caller on other line even in meeting attended by 100+ person.