Most of us can rattle off the first few words-that-stand-for-letters of the NATO phonetic alphabet. Alfa, Bravo, and Charlie no doubt come right to mind, and depending on how many war movies you’ve seen, so may Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. But how many of us would recognize Kilo, Mike, and Sierra? For that matter, how much do any of us know about how these particular words came to be used to spell out other words when communicating over walkie-talkies or other low-fidelity communication systems? In the video above for his YouTube channel RobWords, YouTuber Rob Watts explains the development of and logic behind the NATO phonetic alphabet, wasting no time in clarifying that it isn’t a phonetic alphabet, nor was it created by NATO.What we actually have here, Watts says, is a “spelling alphabet,” and its story goes back to the invention of the telephone in the eighteen-seventies. “Early telephonists found that if ever they needed to spell something out, like someone’s name, one letter would get misheard as another.” The idea of expressing each letter with a common word starting with that letter arose naturally, though figuring out exactly which words to use took a lot more trial and error.In the early nineteen-tens, Western Union published a spelling alphabet consisting mostly of the names of people and places: Adams, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Edward, and so on. By World War I, the British army had also implemented a rather more eccentric version, using words like Beer, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pip, and Yorker; by World War II, “every armed service in Britain and the U.S. had developed its own spelling alphabet.”In light of the rapidly globalizing nature of human affairs, and not just the military kind, the need for a single universal spelling alphabet became pressing. It wasn’t until the establishment of the International Civil Aviation Organization, meant to oversee the skies in peacetime, that earnest work began on a revision of the U.S.-U.K. combined forces’ existing spelling alphabet, incorporating English words easily pronounceable by non-English speakers, while also being minimally confusable for one another. By 1956, ICAO finalized its list, which has remained the NATO phonetic alphabet (or, officially, the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet) we all know today — or we at least partially know. It may well be worth your time to memorize the rest, since you never know when you’ll have to keep your Papas and Quebecs straight.Related Content:The Alphabet Explained: The Origin of Every LetterThe Evolution of the Alphabet: A Colorful Flowchart, Covering 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to TodayThe Enigma Machine: How Alan Turing Helped Break the Unbreakable Nazi CodeWhat English Would Sound Like If It Was Pronounced PhoneticallyBased in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.