Mixed Up/Unusual Names Someone Has Called Your Org.
 

Alright most orgs around the country go by the same name. For example...
Beta Theta Pi = Beta
Phi Gamma Delta = FIJI
Kappa Kappa Gamma= Kappa
Kappa Alpha Theta = Theta
But what are some unusual names you've heard people give your org? Or have they ever mixed your's with another?

One day I was waiting for a bus and a women my age saw my sorority tote with AGD letters, and asked if I was a Delta (as in Delta Sigma Theta). I had to tell her nope Im an Alpha Gam.
Then I was talking to a sigma chi who saw my letters in my aol screen name and he said, "So you're and Alpha Delt" Im thinking to myself I've never even heard ADPi get called Alpha Delt. Once again had to correct.
On a campus near where i live the Sigma Kappa's are known as Kappas. Theyre we just known as SK or Sigma Kappa on my campus and many others I knew of. Plus I know a post on here called Betas...Thetas

Well...I've never had anything THAT unusual happen, but for the longest time my boyfriend called my sorority Delta Tortoise because he couldn't keep the letters straight (there's a sorority at his school that has a name rhyming with ours).

The majority of people call "Gamma Phi Beta" members "Gamma Phis", but I have heard some people calling them "Betas". I think that was at the University of Western Ontario. Strange huh?

'FIGI' has gotta be the most common...which I can understand from people who dont have a chapter at their school, but for those that do, FIJI is on our sown letter garments :eek:

Whoops! Although its not really incorrect, alot of times on mixer or Greek Week T shirts, our actual Greek letters will appear somewhere. As many Greeks know, we dont print our letters, and they can only appear on certain places (i.e. a house or badge). So remember that when Greek Week rolls around! :D

Since this post got bumped up, and its very late EST, I have to bring this up. Apparently, in addition to not knowing how to spell FIJI, our Panhellenic doesnt know that FIJI and Phi Gamma Delta are one and the same. I mean, I know were the only off campus house besides KA (and how do you screw up KA), but our t shirts for our Greek Week had FIJI and Phi Gamma Delta as two different fraternities...

When referring to my org. I usually say "AGD". Sometimes I say it too fast and people think I'm saying "A-D-D"... :rolleyes:

I haven't really run into strange names, but I've run into some interesting nicknames. When our founding fathers were around in the early 90s here in Toronto we were known as the Sigma Pigs.

In an earlier post there was mention of AD as possibly ADPi. I know here and wherever else they exist, Alpha Dleta Phi is known as AD.

Also, my gf is a Theta at the university of Western Ontario and I know they call Gamma Phi Beta, Gamma Phi. I think it would get confusing with Beta (Beta Theta Pi) there.

I have had people think that AOII was Alpha Omega Pi instead of Alpha Omicron Pi.

I have also heard people call Pi Kappa Alpha Pi Kap which is confusing to me b/c we had a Pi Kappa Phi chapter at my school also, and they were known as Pi Kap

Probably the biggest misnomer I've heard is when I tell someone I'm in Sigma Alpha Epsilon, they say, "Oh, you're a SigEp!"

NNNNOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm NOT a SigEp!

No offense.

I'm an S-A-E :D

Here is what we get, WHAT'S AEO?!?!!?

Then my collegiate chapter was OMICRON THETA which of course is OQ and was asked what's with the other O?:eek: :confused: :eek:

Alpha Phi Omega & Alpha Phi Alpha
 

For some strange reason, some people, mainly African-Americans who are non-Greek, love to confuse Alpha Phi Omega, with Alpha Phi Alpha. It's hilarious!! The minute someone sees the first 2 letters on my sweater, they don't even give my Omega the second look, they come and say, "Oh you're an "Alpha", alright!" And everytime I have to correct them on the difference between the two. Some even get the impression that APO is a LOCAL fraternity!! :) OK, once and for all here is some obvious differences between the 2 GLO's:

Alpha Phi Omega: Founded 12/16/1925
Alpha Phi Alpha: Founded 12/04/1906
APO: Colors- Blue and Gold
APA: Colors- Black and Old Gold
APO: International Co-ed Service Fraternity
APA: Historically Black all-male Fraternity

...Just to name a few.

-pirate00

"In founding Alpha Phi Omega, not only was a new fraternity formed, but also an entirely new type of fraternity was formed ... dedicated to serving others ..." -Donald Terwilliger, Founding member

"X and a horseshoe, Chi-O!"

Sorry, couldn't resist. The chapter on my campus is VERY enthusiastic - great women!

At my school we had several clubs who "adopted" Greek letters as their own - something that had to do with their club, not an actual GLO's letters. For example, we had the Lecture Series Committee -> LSC -> Lambda Sigma Chi, and the Student Information Processing Board -> SIPB -> Sigma Pi Beta. They would have lettered T-shirts and sweatshirts made up, etc.

My local sorority was called Sigma Iota Phi. One day I was walking around campus wearing letters, and someone I vaguely knew came up to me and said "Oh, I didn't know you were in SIPB." Me: (puzzled) "I'm not." Him: "Oh, I just saw S-I-P and thought SIPB." :rolleyes:

When we went national, we got mixed up with AEPi ALL THE TIME. It was semi-understandable, since AEPi has been on campus a lot longer than AEPhi, but after the umpteenth time of being asked when AEPi had gone coed or being mistaken for an AEPi little sister or someone's girlfriend, enough was enough!! :)

Ch-ch-ch Chee O, ch-ch-ch-Chee O-mega...thanks a lot Hootie, that will be stuck in my brain for a week. :p

Two of our ASA chapters in Kansas had the apple as their local symbol and used to call themselves "Apples." Apple - Alpha I guess. We are known as Alphas, Alpha Sigs, ASA - it depends on the campus and how many other orgs there are there with Alpha in their name. We had Alpha Sigma Tau also (not to mention A Phi O, Alpha Psi Omega and AXP) so if we had called ourselves Alphas people would have been like "which ones?"

When I was at Clarion we had Phi Sigma Kappa and Phi Sigma (local that used to be PSE but didn't go along w/ the merger). They were continually arguing about who was "the REAL Phi Sigs" and got very offended if you called them anything else. We finally got sick of it and started calling them the Kappas and the "Ma"s.

Hehe, thats alot like our argument with Kappa's now... theyre all like "Were the Phi Sigs..." and we tell them "No we are..." so we call them Kappa's still, and ourselves the Phi Sigs... cos what else can we be besides Phi Sigma Sigma or Phi Sigs? Someone looked at our letters and said.. "Whats PEE?" Ugh! And our chapter designation, Gamma Gamma, gets looked at like backwards 77's!"

In TBS, we get the whole TBE thing... cos uneducated people dont understand the difference between sigma and E.... Although I love our chapter designation... delta omicron, triangle circle!

As an Alpha Xi Delta, i get Alpha Zeta Delta all the time bc you say "AZD".or some times people see it written out and think its "Alpha Chi Delta" and when i was in Indiana for a national convention, we were called "fuzzies".....which i found somewhat amusing, others thought it was grotesque and nationals "frowns upon that". but whatever...and then one of our pledge classes called themselves "fozzies" (like fozzie bear from the muppets), and that kinda took for awhile. it was used insted of saying "the new members". but then we got scolded for that too.
at elon the tri sigmas are just Sigma
the ZTAs are Zeta or Ta's
Phi Mu is Phi Mu
AOPi is AOPi
AXO is sometimes called Achoo (as in the sneeze)..hope that doesnt offend anyone!!!! i wasnt there when they colonized so i don't know how that came to be.
Sigma Kappa is either Sigma Kappa or the Kappas
LXA is the Chi Chis (as in the restaurant "chee chees")
KA is KA
Sigma Chi is occassionally Sigma Khaki
and Kappa Sigma is kappa Sig
and Pi Kappa Phi is Pi Kap

i think thats it. we all have derogatory names too. PM me if you are so inclined to know them. I would post them here, but people would take it too seriously and get offended.
-Maggie

I agree 100% with you. However, I have to qualify what I posted earlier in this thread.....
In about 1988, when I was interested in going Greek, and I met an AOII from UWO and Gamma Phi Beta was just coming onto campus at UWO as a new NPC group, and that AOII girl DEFINITELY referred to them as "Beta" (because I corrected her and said "Don't you mean Gamma Phi?". However, the name obviously did not stick! :)

Re: Mixed Up/Unusual Names Someone Has Called Your Org.
 

Actually, the ADPis on my campus all wore jackets that said "Alpha Delts" on the back but I'm not familiar with any other chapter calling themselves that. Not that I know THAT many ADPis, though.

I've had people asking me what "AZ" stands for when I am wearing letters. Someone asked me once if I was from Arizona :confused:

AZ
 

Killarney, I get the same question- What does AZ stand for? It's usually friends from high school who have no knowledge of greek life. It always cracks me up though, I would ask what does triangle z stand for before AZ. Who knows! It makes me laugh every time though!

I've never really heard of someone mistaking Delta Delta Delta for something else or by a different nickname but my Dad who wasn't Greek in college loves to say "Delta Delta Delta? isn't that like Lambda Lambda Lambda i.e. the fraternity in the movie Nerds, to make irritate and tease me! However, people as mistake me when I say I am an A-CHI-O legacy for an A CHI-O legacy when I say it fast in conversation. :rolleyes:

I have a lot of people think that A-Chi-O and Chi-O are the same thing. I'll wear a shirt and someone will say "Oh, my daughter's a Chi O too." We always have a few confused parents at the wrong house on Bid Day.

A lot of people seem to not know how to pronounce "tau" as in Zeta Tau Alpha. I've heard everything from "tow" (like "towel"), "toe", "tay-you" to "ta" (with the 'a' as in tassle). :rolleyes: It's pronounced "taw" to rhyme with "saw". Seems everyone knows we go by Zeta, but they sometimes get the full name confused with Zeta Phi Beta who also go by Zeta. :)

I was at a very nice department store in Chicago in an AXD letter shirt. The girl at the counter looked at me and said, "Oh! I used to be in a sorority. I know that's an Alpha, but what are the other two letters?"

I'm thinking, OK, Xi is an unusual letter, but I learned Delta long before I was Greek in high school chemistry! How does a Greek not know a Delta?

Re: Alpha Phi Omega & Alpha Phi Alpha
 

I wore my APO letters at a party and this girl walked ALL THE WAY across the room to say hello to me JUST BECAUSE she thought I was an Alpha. She was non-Greek.

Woman on the subway, noticing my keychain: "My son is an Alpha, too!" That's great! Too bad I'm in APO. ..

I also have been mistaken for an Omega (Psi Phi) by people who don't know any better.

Pre-frosh at orientation: "I see by your letters that you are a Que, could you tell us a little about Greek life?"

That's it for now. . .

An old boyfriend, who happened to be friends with several Kappa Alpha's, used to say things like, "So, are you going out with your Kappa Alpha girls tonight?" Then he has the nerve to say, "They're just letters, not like they mean anything" after I repeatedly corrected him. Oh shoot, I went off, telling him that they do happen to stand for something and they are very special to my sisters and I. That's some non-greeks for you!

The cutest is when my little brother calls me a Kappa Triangle. Spoken like a true 12 year old...

~ A proud Kappa DELTA

Alpha Tau Omega
 

My freshman year, before I was greek at my school, all the fraternities use to go around and put flyers under dorm doors for their parties. Well ATO always put one under ours and not knowing, we would say hey you wanna go to AT-O tonight, instead of A-T-O.

When Beta Theta Pi first arrived, one of my sisters say the guys wearing letters. From a distance the theta looked like an O so she called them BOP like TEP. The guys said that no one called them BOP at any other chapter, but we liked it so it stuck.
When I was a freshman pledge, a woman from one of my classes who knew nothing about greeklife asked me why some many women were wearing eat across their chests. I had no idea what she meant until she pointed and said there's another one. She thought that SDT looked like EAT. :p

You wouldn't think that Sigma Kappa would be tough to say. But, my pledge semester, the pledge class president from TKE called me up to schedule a mixer, and said, "We are so excited to have a mixer with you Kappa Sigma girls, you are so hot." I didn't really mind the "so hot" comment, but gosh darn we're Sigma Kappa, and there is actually a Kappa Sigma chapter on our campus, you would think this guy could get it straight.

The only thins about Alpha Phi that I have heard, is a mispronunciation. People will say "ALPHA FIE" and nope, it is "ALPHA FEE." ;)

Yeah this happens to us sometimes too - very whack, very funny

Brothers dardenr and pirate00, I had things like that happen to me too...

Most of the time people will think I'm a member of Delta Sigma Theta because of my letters. I can remember one time I was in my car at a stop light and a woman pulled up next to me (I have a GSS tag on the back of my car). She was like, "Hey Soror!" and I was like, "Oh...hi..." thinking that she may have been a Gamma Sig. She asked me if I was in Delta and I had to say no, but I think we both felt pretty silly :p

Another time a lot of my sisters and myself were at a Wal-Mart during our National Convention. You know how it is at Wal-Mart: we're just walking around, chillin. Well another young lady that walked by us with her shopping cart WHIPPED around and started back towards us. She came up to us and greeted us, giving us hugs and everything! She said, "I'm in Kappa Sigma chapter at East Carolina" (we're in Greenville)! "Is there something big going on this weekend?" We knew something was up because GSS doesn't even have chapters starting with Kappa yet :p So I tell her, "We're in Gamma Sigma Sigma" and she goes, "Oh, I thought you were in DST, my bad!" Sorry to burst your bubble...

I think it's because people just see the Sigma in the middle of my car tag or shirt, or that my sorority's colors are Maroon and White and DST is Crimson and Creme. Another time I had somebody ask me, "What does T-E-E mean" :rolleyes: No sweetie. This is a Gamma and those are two Sigmas.

At my school everyone called the Alpha Chi Omegas, Alpha Chi. I have heard throught these boards that the AXOs are called
A- Chi-O. To me, if I heard it and not seen it that would have been confusing to me, because we have Chi Omega on campus. So it was Chi-O or Alpha Chi as nicknames. Much less confusing!

I swear that I'm not making this up. When I was at Auburn, there was a girl who wanted to be a Chi O and when they cut her in rush, she immediately cut everyone else except Alpha Chi Omega--and pledged them so she could tell people, especially the folks back home, that she was A Chi O and they'd think she was a Chi O.

My mom was an Alpha Chi Omega, and one thing I remember her distinctly telling me. It is always Alpha Chi Omega or Alpha Chi NEVER AXO. I guess that would eliminate confusion between Alpha Chi and XO :D

oxhouse. I don't really have a problem with reffering to the physichal structure in which some members life as "the oxhouse" but not for the actully fraternity. Or I'm in OX and Theta Chi. I think they're cool animals, and good UNoffical mascots, but still.

Some mishaps that I have encountered:

Alpha Phi Omega is called either APO or A - Phi - Q. A -Phi - Q is most common with the HBCU all male chapters. One day I was at a mall, I was wearing my APO jersey and the letters were made from this really cute teddy bear fabric. (Of course, I had the matching shorts!) These two guys approached me telling me that I needed to stop perping because I was not an A - Phi - Q. I said you're right I'm an APO and walked off!

Alpha Omicron Pi - Alphas, Alpha O, Alpha Omega Pi

Pi Kappa Phi is known as either Pi Kapp or Pike. (Some places tease and call them the boy Pi Phis.) Those same nicknames I have heard applied to Pi Kappa Alpha.

Theta Phi Alpha - Theta Phi or Theta

I think the funniest thing happened to a friend of mine. He was wearing an AXO grub shirt with the letters written in Greek. A girl walked up to him and asked what's the "A" for? Apparently, she never knew there was an AXO.

How Rude
 

aopirose,

That was really rude of those brothers to do that to you! That's certainly not upholding the fraternity principle of FRIENDSHIP... Now the whole APO vs. APQ thing...that's a whole other thread that I can PM you about if you'd like. As your sister in service I feel the need to apologize for that.

In Service...



Gamma Sigma Sigma: Celebrating 50 Years of Service: 1952-2002

I don't think you can screw up Sigma Sigma Sigma, but we do get alot the 3 E's, but that's just silly. And Please....out of respect, please don't ever call us Tri Sig, it's Tri Sigma for short, just Tri Sigma. Thanks!!!

Ok, I went to a school in Kansas and our ASA's did call themselves the Apple's. There were apples on everything! Isn't your mascot the ladybug? But, we did go to a teachers college, so I bet that's where that started. It even sounds weird to me to call them ASA's.

And would a Pike please respond here? Pi Kappa Alpha at every university I have ever been to have been the Pike's. PKA, doesn't make sense to me....but that's the way it is. I don't think I'm wrong...would a Pike speak up here?

Re: How Rude
 

gamma_girl,

I appreciate your concern but please don't sweat it. It happened about 13 years ago and it was really all but forgotten. At that time, APO hadn't been co-ed that long in the grand scheme of things. I chalked it up as these two not getting the memo!

I met some really nice A - Phi - Qs at national convention years ago. They were stunned that there were female brothers but really nice about everything. They ran around taking pictures of most every female. They didn't think their chapter back home would believe it otherwise!

YLFS

Sometimes people get AGD and AZD confused if you say them too fast.

The Halloween before last there was a fatal hit-and-run accident involving an Alpha Xi Delta new member. They had a memorial service that weekend and when I got the message on my answering machine, it sounded like they said AGD not AZD. Since my sister/suitemate happened to have been with her and I had not seen her, I thought she was the one in the accident. While I was very sorry for Alpha Xi's loss, I was so relieved it wasn't one of my sisters.

If that's true, then ChiO got that one right.