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.