of the 8 sororitys and 15 frats on my campus.. Not one has "zeta" "Mu" or "Nu" or "Upsilon" "Eta" "iota" "lamda" SO thats 7 letters out of 24 letters 7 arnt used....
butt you can see Kappa everywhere
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Sigma Kappa
Phi Kappa Psi
Kappa Sigma
Kappa Alpha Order
Phi Sigma Kappa
Pi Kappa Phi
Pi Kappa Alpha
Tau Kappa Epsilon

Okay, the frequency of greek letters has been discussed way more than really necessary...

But as for reasons why certain letters occur over and over again...

First of all, since the beggining of fraternities (with the exception being Phi Beta Kappa since that was the first ever), most groups have been copies of another group. Beta Theta Pi was founded in 1839 making it like 6th or 7th oldest group, and yet our founders modeled it after Alpha Delta Phi (which was the first fraternity on the campus of Miami University) only without the negative aspects that our founders had with that association.
Even today I think everyone who is greek has the feelign that the aims of our organizations are similar - great friendship, high achievement, support from the group, becoming better than you were before. With that assumption it makes sense that since our ideals cross, so too would our letters. I'm pretty sure that Phi for most orgs has to do with friendship or a word associated with friendship, and so it's repeated use makes sense as friendship is a shared value/goal of all organizations. I'm sure that the other common letters have similar types of situations where their meaning is close to that of the meanings for other organizations.

Nine of them...


AGD
ADP
AEF
AXD
AOP
ASA
AST
AF
ACW

Hrm - this is interesting...this is my school:

Chi Omega
Delta Delta Delta
Kappa Delta
Delta Gamma
Phi Mu
Alpha Delta Pi
Kappa Alpha Theta
Pi Beta Phi

Phi Kappa Tau
Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Kappa Sigma
Pi Kappa Alpha
Delta Tau Delta
Sigma Phi Epsilon
Alpha Tau Omega
Sigma Chi
Sigma Nu
Pi Kappa Phi
Kappa Alpha

Deltas: 8
Kappas: 7
Alphas: 6
Phi: 5
Sigmas: 5
Pi: 4
Tau: 3
Chis: 2
Omegas: 2

ha - Delta has the most, but Frat wise, they make up all the Sigmas which is 5.

Ah Tri Kappa. I was getting ready to mention that one! I only know about Tri Kappa because it's really big in my home town. I thought it was only an Indiana organization, but I am probably wrong. Anyway, it's a education society. I think every teacher I had in high school and middle school was in it! As a side note, has anyone seen their badge? It's scary! It's a skull with crossbones underneath it. Odd for something women mainly would wear.... (Sorry, I'm done rambling now! :D)

Also Zeta Tau Alpha has it tucked onto the end there! :)

...so does Theta Phi Alpha, and Kappa Alpha Theta stuck it in the middle.

Hmmmmm.... interesting I never realized that there were so many Alpha's. I alos see a lot of Sigma around in the GLO's

We have three groups that have "Sigma" in their names:

SIGMA tau Gamma:D
Phi Beta SIGMA
SIGMA Gamma Rho

Is it really a mystery why the same letters are used over and over?

This is very easy. Here’s the frequency of usage of letters in English (by one calculation):

E 11.1607%
A 8.4966%
R 7.5809%
I 7.5448%
O 7.1635%
T 6.9509%
N 6.6544%
S 5.7351%
L 5.4893%
C 4.5388%
U 3.6308%
D 3.3844%
P 3.1671%
M 3.0129%
H 3.0034%
G 2.4705%
B 2.0720%
F 1.8121%
Y 1.7779%
W 1.2899%
K 1.1016%
V 1.0074%
X 0.2902%
Z 0.2722%
J 0.1965%
Q 0.1962%

You could do a similar analysis for Greek.

Obviously Greek words for certain ideals are going to pop up more often in GLO mottoes and names – Friendship, Brother/Sisterhood, Love, Honor, Truth, Fidelity, Scholarship.

Do you think in Greece they sit around wondering why American groups tend to use the same letters over and over?

AAA
AARP
NAACP
CIA
AA
MADD
ADA
FAA
NAMBLA

Agency. Association. American. Against. Anonymous.

wptw

Dayum, wptw, you never cease to amaze me. You have a brain like an encylopedia! :D

What, you mean square? Really white? Slightly musty smelling?

wptw

:rolleyes: You're such a goof :)

Some definitely do seem to be overused...it can get a little confusing for some people, especially since at my school, among others, we have:
Kappa Sigma
Sigma Kappa
Phi Sigma Kappa
Phi Kappa Sigma

lol what's up with that?

That's nasty. When the freshmen boys rush, they usually don't know where they are. I was at a rush party at SigEp one night, and I saw the kid in the union - he was like "This is GP, the girl I met at Sigma Pi." I said "No, it was Sigma Phi Epsilon." "No! It was Sig Pi, I'm sure of it!" "Ok, my boyfriend isn't in that house, you're right..." The kid ending up joining Lambda Sigma Pi, to the best of my knowledge. ;)