Does anyone else with the letter Gamma get asked.."So what does the r stand for?"

Since my Delta Sig chapter rechartered in 99, we're pretty small, unlike the 120 member chapter we had in the early 90s.

So, since we're relativly unknown, people ALWAYS used to mistake us for Delta Sigma PI, that business frat. And we're like "NO, we're in IFC".

Which I never understood why this was never resolved, because both of us go by "Delta Sig" and "DSP", even though we were started before PI was.

On my campus, Delta Sigma Phi is called Delt Sig but, at some other schools and often times here on GC, people call them Delta Sig. That still bugs me.

Yeah, I get that... or "Is that a T?"

I've also gotten "OH! I thought your necklace said KKK" while wearing my lavaliere. Um. No.

you would think so, but apparently folks never got to that level of math or science. as CT4 said earlier, we get asked about "AEO" all the time.

Oh lordy, all the time. A story:

I was in one of the college choirs, and another choir member was a DG. We were both wearing our letters one day, and I overheard her talking with our choir director, telling him something like "No, it's the Greek letter Delta, and that's a Gamma, it's my sorority, etc." Afterwards, he turned to me and said "So what's KKR?"

Dim people, part one.

I also get the "Oh, for a minute I thought your necklace said KKK."

Your Math teacher is actually right.
The English pronunciation of "Phi" is fie.
The Greek pronunciation of "Phi" is fee.
Since the Math Teacher is talking about Phi in terms of Math (just like Delta for change and Sigma for sum are in there), and people in Greece pretty much invented Math, "Fee" is right, cuz it's the Greek pronunciation..

As for names like
Alpha "Fee" and
Pi Beta "Fie"....when it comes to nomenclature, fraternities and sororities essentially use a "hybrid" of both English and Greek pronunciation.

FWIW: I had a Math teacher who pronunced Beta as "Beeta" (which is the Greek pronunciation).

yeah people call us "rob" a lot.... kind of funny i guess?

Just thought of another one - not sure if this has already come up, but -

One of my sorority sisters has a bio sister who is a member of SDT. When she is wearing letters she gets asked ALL THE TIME "Why are you wearing a shirt that says EAT?" As if the STD jokes weren't bad enough :rolleyes:

Phi Mu and Phi Mu Alpha
 

Again We have to correct groups all the time we are not Phi Mu a nursing sorority based off of ADPi but Phi Mu Alpha the Social fraternity based around music. Just a little alpha means so much. It doesn't work like Lambda Chi does for Lambda Chi Alpha!!!

Jason McCarty
President
Beta Alpha Chapter
Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity

President
UTC Interfraternity Council

the main one I get..mainly from family is "Oh do you work for ATA?!" :rolleyes:

Others include mispronouncing Lambda as LambAda..so people get some real lame jokes there.

My sister and other family members, when I wear letters that have the fancy Upsilon (like my sig), they tend to say 'AAAYYYA!" WOMP

Upsilon is almost always mispronounced UP-silon as opposed to OOP-silon.

Whenever I wear my letters around my family (being that we grew up in a gang infested neighborhood) or childhood friends, say "damn that looks like you're throwing down the fork" (reference to a gang >:O )

And us and Alpha Psi Lambda get confused all the time because of the Alpha looking like a Lambda and the Psi somewhat resembling the Upsilon...I;ve gotten a couple of A Psi members thinking i was one of their brothers LOL

oh we get Delta "OOP"silon alot. so finally we made a rush shirt that had a dictionary definition and DU spelled out phonetically.

Delta Upsilon: (del-tah yoop-sih-lon)
N. 1. Better Men
2. Better Brothers
3. Better Fraternity

we also get Delta EPSILON alot...that is just plain wrong.

My ex girlfriend used to call us "assholes".

Last weekend, a couple of sisters were out in D.C. and someone asked them if they were members of Phi Nu Xi.:mad: The sad part was that he was greek himself:cool:

Phi Mu is not "a nursing sorority" nor are they "based off of ADPi."

If you expect people to get your name and the purpose of your org right, show the same consideration for others.

Sometimes, nicknames can be situational. We're usually known as AD's or Alpha Delts, but some campi we're known as the Alphas, some the Phis, at my campus we're known as ADP (We don't have a ADPi) At Hopkins, our chapter is called the Wa-Was after the store that used to be in the basement of our old house. The store hasn't been there for 10-5 years, the chapter hasn't been there for 2 years, but we're still the WaWas:) At UMass, we called LXA "Smurfs" because of the blue and white paint job. Go figure.

I have never heard DU pronounced with a "yoop" sound.

Me neither. The DUs on my campus called themselves Delta "OOP"silon.

According to the dictionary, the "correct" English pronunciation is UP-si-lon or YOOP-si-lon, but I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone use either. I almost invariably hear OOP-si-lon, including from DUs.

In Greek, the "U" is an umlaut, so that it comes out sounding more like a cross between OOPS-i-lon and EEPS-i-lon.

We called the Lambda Chis "Lamp chops".

I learned Up-si-lon when I learned the greek alphabet but we also didn't have any chapters with an Upsilon on our campus to tell us to say it differently. (Kind of like how I never knew that Phi could be pronounced "Fee")

LMAO

We are LPsiD and people, even orgs on our council at USF, have called or initialled us as LSD because of the Psi (S SOUND). I mean I knew we're addictive and all, but ew don't string people out like the drug lol

I found this insanely cute, and it made me break into a goofy grin. I can see my Dad saying that, all proud (but still poking fun).

An Alpha Gam is an Alpha Gam...I have had AGD mistaken for ADD though. The only derrogatory name I've heard about us on campus (of course...who's going to say them in front of me?) is Alpha Manna Delta. We used to have a lot of athletes, and we have a slight obsession with winning intramurals. I've only heard it from the older guys, 'cause we don't really have the "athlete sorority" distinction now.

or...

Sorry to say, this still happens 5 years after I answered it the first time. :confused: Perhaps consistency is good.

I know this is really, really old, but I am a member of Delta Sigma Pi (the business fraternity), and we are known as Deltasigs, but the IFC fraternity is Delta Sig. Obviously it sounds the same, but we were taught to spell it as one word to avoid confusion with the Delta Sigs. :)

I don't have any stories about AOII, except a few people who thought that the only Greek "O" was Omega, so they thought we screwed up our name.

Delta Zeta = DZ
Delta Gamma = DG
I refer to them as the deltas...

it is pronounced OOP-silon by its self. but when a delta preceeds it, its YOOP-silon. like phi is Fie, but its Alpha Fee. as to other DU's saying oopsilon, yeah i dunno, every one from my chapter and the neighboring chapters and head quarters pronounces it Yoop-silon

*SMH* The other things I've seen/heard are "Theta Nu Zi" and "Tau Nu Xi" because we use TNX as the abbreviation.

O good lord. That Fie/fee thing is a bad enough Greek Urban Legend, and now we have Oopsilon/Yoopsilon added to it.

Think about it logically. Certainly the sounds letters represent change based on what other letters are around them -- c is pronounced like s after i or e and otherwise like k. But the name of the letter? When it's used for initials? That's like saying "T" is called "tee," unless it comes after a vowel, and then it's "Tay." So its F-"Tee"-D but U-"Tay"-Knoxville.

F is pronounced "fee" in Greek. Always. The anglicized pronounciation, particularly in America, is "Fie." That's because the sound represented by Iota in Greek is "ee" (the Greek pronunciation is "ee-ota)," while the sound typically represented by I in English is "eye." Some orgs, such as Alpha Phi, use the Greek pronunciation, others use the anglicized pronunction.

Upsilon is pronounced Ü-psi-lon in classical Greek -- there's no Y at the beginning, and the u is an umlaut, like one might find in German. In modern Greek, it's more like "ee-psilon." It's not surprising that "YOOP-si-lon" is a standard English pronunciation, since we usually put a y sound at the beginning of words that start with a long u -- use, utility, ubiquitous.

To the degree that what comes before the u has any influence, that Y you hear after delta is merely an epenthesis -- an insertion to ease pronunction going from the "ah" in delta to the "oo" in upsilon -- part of why we usually put a y sound at the beginning of words that start with a long u to start with.

Most people are like "what's AOA?!"

And I've had a couple people, mostly older, think that I'm in Alpha Phi Alpha!! And it's like yeah, except that the letters are completely different, the colors are COMPLETELY different... and I'm a girl!

I remember one year when there was a Greek Night, there was a banner that one organization's new members had made that had my sorority's greek letters wrong. We're Sigma Psi Kappa and it was written as "Sigma Phi Kappa" We kind of laughed and then let the New Members' organization know about the mistake and fixed the banner ourselves.

The fraternities were always confusing at NJIT too. A lot of Tau's and Phi's in the names.

Alpha Sigma Phi (Alpha Sig)
Iota Kappa Phi (Iota Kapp or IKPhi)
Iota Phi Theta
Kappa Xi Kappa (Kappa Xi)
Lambda Sigma Upsilon (LSU)
Lambda Theta Phi
Phi Beta Sigma
Pi Kappa Phi (Pi Kapp)
Psi Upsilon (Psi U)
Sigma Lambda Beta
Sigma Pi (Sig Pi)
Tau Delta Phi (Tau Delt)
Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP)
Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE)
Theta Chi (OX)

We have been so confused with 2 groups...
 

My name is Dawn and I am the CEO of Sigma Delta Upsilon Fraternity, Inc. (A DJFraternity) Est. June 30th, 2006... founded in Brooklyn, Ny.
People have thought that our letters have stood for:
"EAT" like the actual word eat....
"EAT" like sigma delta tau (when the last letter if you know your greek letters is upsilon)
"EAT" like getting us confused with MSU (Mu Sigma Upsilon) and LSU (Lambda Sigma Upsilon) -- brother and sister groups.

And i have had guys come up to me and shout out: :"Yea AKA!" and i'm like...thanks but I am not an AKA.... but hey, if youre not in it...i guess all the letters look the same to them if they cant translate them much less know what each one means?!

it's flattering that they either get us confused or think our letters mean something else... or that we are from another group! lol :D :p

It took me awhile after college to start being comfortable with saying "AGD" in the context of my sorority. At my college campus, Alpha Xi Delta went by "AZD", so it was very confusing if anyone tried to call us "AGD."

We tried to gently steer people (members and non-members) to use the "Alpha Gam" name to minimize confusion - both for our benefit and AZD's. It became such a habit in college to only say "Alpha Gam" when abbreviating our name that it took me awhile to adapt to "AGD" as being an acceptable version too. :)

Haven't read enough of this thread to see if this has been mentioned, but all too many science majors have this inate need to refer to Alpha Delta Pi as "ADP".


When I was a Rho Chi, I couldn't stop laughing at my partnered Rho Chi, who broke down and yelled, "It's SDT, ladies, NOT STD!!"

I'm sure that most people who aren't used to seeing the Greek alphabet have a hard time remembering which symbol is which. I had a sixth-grade teacher who insisted that we ALL memorize the Greek alphabet, backwards and forwards!

lol, that's funny hc, because I'm a member of Sigma Tau Delta and I'm VERY proud to be...STD!!!!

mix ups
 

Alpha Omicron Pi ive heard Alpha Omega all the time or people that spell is AOPi which isnt right

Tri Sigma people calling them Tri Sig..which is wrong

At UGA, each house has a rho chi stationed at the house for each day of recruitment. My senior year, our rho chi for one of the rounds was a doll, but also really goofy. She left us a nice note at the end of the day that began "Dear Gamma Delta" and referred to us as GD several times in the letter. We never knew whether she was joking or if she really had mixed up the letters on the front of our house!

One of my sister's friends mixed up my mom's sorority and mine into one house and thought we were both "Alpha Delta Gamma."

For what it is worth, there is an NIC fraternity Alpha Delta Gamma.