Kappa Gamma Delta?
 

Quick question....

Okay, me and my girls basically are holed up in a room finishing up our constitution and etc...well..we decided to change the name do to some situations. We then decided to end on "Kappa Gamma Delta". However, there is a local asian interest sorority and a pre-med sorority (it consists of maybe 3 chapters) I found on the internet w/the same name.

Would it be proper to continue to use the name? It's the only one we all truely fell in love with and since the other groups are on the West coast and we're on the east coast..well...ya know. Any thoughts??

It shouldn't be a problem, since the other Kappa Gamma Delta groups are local/regional and not in your area.

IMO, locals should stay away from the letters of NPC, NIC, NPHC, and other inter/national orgs, and locals/regionals at the same school and possibly also in their geographic area... but there are only so many 2- and 3-letter combinations of Greek letters out there... eliminate the ones that don't stand for anything meaningful, and the ones that spell odd things (who'd want to be known as Alpha Sigma Sigma? ;) ) and you have even fewer options.

How is Kappa Gamma Delta / whatever doing these days? :)

We see, we found the proper meanings we wanted, that's why it meant so much to us. (we've been in this damn room for over 6 hours working on this..) ;)

Basically, we only have 1 other fraternity that uses Kappa (TKE), none that uses Gamma, and 1 local sororoty that uses Delta (Delta Theta).

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post... I didn't mean the individual letters, I meant the letter combinations. As in, you shouldn't start a local sorority called (say) Alpha Epsilon Phi, because there's already a national by that name, but no problem if you want to call yourselves (say) Epsilon Phi Alpha.

If you've found letters you like and that are meaningful to you, and there aren't any inter/national GLOs or locals/regionals near you that are using them, I say go for it. :)

If the other Kappa Gamma Deltas are local and far away from you, and it's the name that truly fits you, I say go for it! However, it might turn out to be a bit of a problem if the other KGD's end up becoming national.

I agree. Unless one of the other groups goes national go ahead and keep the name.

Ditto

*finally gets home*

Well, hopefully we'll only have the local name for a year...

Here's another question, do you think it'd be possible for us to have a Nat'l look at us before the beginning of fall semester? Afterall, we practically have a guarantee that we'll be recognized by the beginning of next semester.

*continues to work on by laws*

I need a drink...*whew*

I really like it. Great name. And like you said, hopefully it will only be for a year!! :D

Here's my point of view....

AGD has a chapter in Athens, which is near Rio Grande.

Active and inactive Ohio Chapters are:

Alpha Gamma, University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH
Zeta Iota, Miami University Oxford, OH
Alpha Lambda, Ohio State University Columbus, OH
Zeta Lambda, Findlay College Findlay, OH
Zeta, Ohio University Athens, OH
Alpha Phi, Marietta College Marietta, OH
Alpha Kappa, Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH
Alpha Delta, Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware, OH
Alpha Iota, Baldwin-Wallace College Berea, OH
Omega, University of Akron Akron, OH

It's a compliment that you want to use Gamma Delta but people may think they heard Alpha Gamma Delta.

I know that sometimes Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Xi Delta, Alpha Gamma Rho (yea I know it's a male fraternity) get mixed up. My vote would be to go for another combination than KGD.

Best of luck to you

LOL. I didn't make the connection.

I knew I really liked the sound of those letters. I just didn't spend too much time thinking about why. :D

I would have to disagree with that logic. If the meaning behind the letters Kappa Gamma Delta is what you are standing for then go for it! If people get it confused with other groups it will happen no matter what letters you choose. A good friend of mine (a Kappa Delta) thought that I was in Alpha Delta Pi for weeks before she saw my license plate bracket that says Alpha OMICRON Pi (and I have been wearing letter sweatshirts, etc). People misreading letters willhappen no matter what and so you need to decide on letters that represent what you stand for, not appearances (side note: the local I was a member of chose the letters because of the first two founders' names and the third letter was decided on because it was more asthetically pleasing than another!).

Did the founders of Alpha Gamma Delta consider no choosing those letters because they might be confused with Alpha Xi Delta?

Sarah

Since I wasn't at Syracuse in 1904, I have no idea. I stand behind my opinion as you stand behind yours.

You just reminded me of something that we were actually discussing earlier today. Even though we tried to stay away from Nat'l sounding names, staying away from local names took the top priority. Also, like I stated before, the letter meanings meant more to us than anything. We even arranged the letters differently but, it was not very aesthetically pleasing. *please note, I'm very anal retentive on these type of things :D *

See, we have a local that has a name VERY similar to 2 Nat'l sororities and they wish to call themselves by the Nat'l nicknames. We didn't set out to do that. We have already decided that our "name" will simply be Kappa's. Heck, the very FIRST name started out with Kappa Gamma! lol! :D

I agree! Some of my friends from back home still think I'm a member of Alpha Delta Phi (yes, a male fraternity, but they didn't know that) and I always tell them it's Alpha Delta Pi

like Beryana mentioned people will misread letters no matter what the combination, so if you've found letters that fit your organization, I would say go for it! :)

side note of ADPi history: Interestingly enough, Alpha Delta Pi used to be Alpha Delta Phi before it was changed to avoid confusion with the male fraternity :)

Texas*princess, I'd always wondered about that, 'cuz I know that ADPi was founded as the Adelphean Society, and wouldn't ADPhi make more sense? But I can see why you'd want to avoid that confusion. :)

TKE209Sweethrt, I'd say go with the letters that you like and that mean something to you.

I say go with the letters you have, even if they do sound a bit like Kappa Kappa Gamma or Alpha Gamma Delta. You can't avoid sounding like some group out there. And there are plenty of groups that sound alike:

AEPhi and AEPi
Sigma Kappa and Kappa Sigma
ADPi and AOPi
ADPi and ADPhi
Theta Chi and Theta Xi
AEPhi and Alpha Phi
Chi O and A Chi O

I even get Delta Zeta and Kappa Delta confused all the time, and they don't even sound that much alike!

I've never really gotten this "being so protective over my letters that I don't want any local group to have anything that sounds like them" thing, but maybe that's because it's hard to find anything that sounds too much like Tri Delta. "Delta Delta Alpha" just doesn't have the same ring. :p

Don't worry about it! I doubt Delta Theta and Chi Omega Alpha are losing sleep worrying that their letters sound like NPC sororities. ;)

*edited to add* AGDLynn, I see your point. However, there's another local sorority at the school we're talking about called Delta Theta, which is similar to DZ, which has chapters everywhere in Ohio (we were founded there). I used to be mistaken for a member of that group every time I went to visit, but it doesn't bother me any. So I really think the name Kappa Gamma Delta is OK.

My sorority gets that a lot, people confusing us with another group. Our name is Kappa Lambda Psi and you have no idea how many times we've been confused with Kappa Alpha Psi. One time, I ordered a pair of shorts with letters on them for a sister, and they came with the wrong letters on them!

LIke I said earlier. I didn't even notice. I just though they had a really nice ring to them. :D So I wouldn't worry about anyone making a wrong connection.
However, something to consider, some local groups do name themselves after the sorority they would most like to affiliate with. I don't really know if that could hurt or help you. But it is something to think about. When I was in school there was a local like that. They were called Beta Omega (I think, it has been a while). It was well known they wanted Chi Omega to colonize them. Not sure what happened in the situation, but they eventually became Theta. So they did get a national eventually, so obviously the Beta Omega thing didn't hurt. I am not sure Chi-O even presented.
But I just wanted to bring that point up. Just make sure that the letters suit your group, and you should be fine.

Well, I have always liked Alpha Gamma Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Delta Zeta etc etc.... :D Hell, I've fallen in love w/so many groups on here, it's going to be honestly difficult to chose just one when we have the chance to be colonized!

Question, why hasn't answered my 2nd question in this thread? ;)

I think we just got going on the letter thing. Sorry I don't know anything about expansion. But I wish you lots of luck. :)

Because I am a know-it-all of the highest order, I will answer your question! The answer is...I have no idea. :p What I would do is start writing letters to sororities you want to consider, tell them what's up, express your interest, etc. etc. I'm not sure how all this works because I've never done it, however, when DZ recolonized on my campus about five years ago it didn't take any time for them to come back (which worked out great for me!). So I suppose if a sorority is open to colonization, they will get on it once they are cleared by the school. That's the hard part.

If Alpha Sigma Alpha and Alpha Sigma Tau have coexisted this long (and at a lot of the same schools, no less) I think y'all can be Kappa Gamma Delta for a while - I would go with Kappa Gams as a nickname though since KKG uses Kappa so much.

A national probably will want to wait till school to look you over - mainly to make sure that they meet all the sisters and vice versa. Also, just a hunch but I think that nationals like to see how local groups are doing on campus as a whole, what they are participating in etc. It's hard to do that when everyone is home for the summer.

If you're interested in having a sorority colonize you, you need to get in touch with the NPC. They can set you up with a person who's in charge of expansion, give you materials about that, and let the NPC sororities know that you're interested. When my sorority contacted them about becoming national, that was what they told us. However, we want to become the 27th NPC sorority rather than be taken under the charter of another sorority, and we're still working on that.

Oh Dana, I know I shouldn't insult your intelligence with my trivial questions! *grovels* ;)

Now for everyone else...get this...the school is VERY open for expansion...the advisor sees it as more enrollment = more money, lol, figures :p When she heard about us wanting to bring in a Nat'l she was all up in support for us..so..yeah... :)

Oh 33girl, didn't know they used "Kappa" a lot, guess we'll go to Kappa Gam's :)

Funny thing, all my girls are on campus this summer...well..at least the main ones..which totals to a big ole "7"!

See...this sucks..I want a big name sorority to come in..however..I don't believe they'd be interested in teeny-weeny school like this....or a long shot like us.. :(

Oh, so far all GLO's are doing just fine, they're up in numbers, well, except for Alpha Sig, they lost a bunch of guys do to graduation.

Doesn't hurt to try, right? My sorority has chapter at schools I've never even heard of, and I know the other NPC groups must have, too.

If the school is very open for expansion, maybe the advisor should send notice to NPC, so all NPC sororities will have notice and be aware of the expansion opportunity!

(I realize that there are two groups you are trying to avoid because the other locals used to be them)

I definately agree with AchtungBaby that it doesn't hurt to try to get a "big name" sorority on your campus to colonize you, but like they say to everyone going through recruitment -- keep an open mind! :) There are 24 amazing groups, and each one, no matter how big or small, is something special! So in the end it isn't about being part of a "big name" sorority, but what the sorority itself means to you and your sisters :)

Continued best wishes to you & your sisters!

As long as your greek advisor is behind you, and you are close/can be at school everyday, you could probably start contacting the NPC as soon as you want to. The process takes awhile, and your local college panhellenic has to grant you the right to expand(this became a HUGE sticking point on my campus).

Once the local panhel grants the right to expand, letters of notice to expand go out, surveys by national get filled out, nationals get picked for the next round, presentations get made, i think i'm skipping a few steps, and then the sorority gets chosen. It usually takes about a semester, but since we did most of the work over winterbreak- we got voted on before thanksgiving, and then by the martin luther king jr day, we were on campus.

Just think what are the most important aspects of your *local* sisterhood, and stick to those; make sure that your national is willing to work with your group. our biggest point was we wanted to keep our local history, and our local traditions...and tri delta seemed to be one of the only ones willing to work with us-they were the only national that knew our local's name, and used it often. this impressed us (turns out there was a reason for this- if your a tri delt, you know what i mean;) )


Basic Idea: Stick to your guns...make sure you have ALOT of time devoted to this...become best friends with your greek advisor...and GOOD LUCK!!!!!

I'd have to agree.......

I think a teeny school isn't a problem- how many of you had honestly heard of Wisconsin - Platteville before I came on here? I think the bigger issue a NPC group would have is your size. I'm not what the requirements are, but I believe most sororities have a minimum size to charter, do they not? I know when we chartered back in the day, we had to have at least 30 girls. I have no idea what the current numbers are, but that might be something to look at.

I think some of the issues with size of the colonizing group will be the size of the campus and how many are greek, etc. I know our campus has 13,000 plus students but we aren't not a hugh greek campus so we only needed 30 sisters to colonize. Now at Syracuse the Pi chapter rechartered with close to 100 members. Other campus with smaller numbers of students may not need to have so many members to colonize.

Even if it is summer, you might want to contact a couple of groups that you're interested in to see if they would be willing to come out and check out the campus. You have at least two groups that have chapters closed there and they may be interested in trying to recolonize so I would say definitely contact them to see what they think. While they're checking out the campus all of you can work on recruiting more members, especially if you have summer session going on right now.

Small size may not be all that big of a problem. My local became a colony of AEPhi with 10 members. We were told we had to get up to 25 before being chartered, but we took in 12 new members and were chartered at 22.

With a small size, you may be a colony for a while, but I doubt national sororities would dismiss you out of hand.

You're right. My colony had to have about 90, I think, to get our charter, but that is a competitive size for a sorority on the campus I was on. Other campuses are smaller and the size of each group is much less, so not as many members would be required. If 100 members were always required for chartering, nobody would have chapters at smaller schools.

I take it you're no longer in school?

Oh, please check my "Rio Life Part 2" in Chapter Operations for updates, 'cause damn, I've got some! :D

Pss: On the school size deal...I think we have less than 3,000 student...it's a pretty small school guys :(

My school has less than 3,000 students and we have 6 national sororities (no locals at all, though). HQ's will most likely look at each campus and each expansion situation individually instead of always going for the big-name, large universities. Just continue working on your sisterhood and things will work out.


BTW, I like the name, too! ;)

well, my college had 1200- 1500 students (when i started - when i graduated...now it is closer to 2000) and we have 4 NPC groups! the size of campus may not be as big of a deal as you might think. there maybe a group or two who are not interested in colonizing on a campus of that size right now because they may have their resources elsewhere. once NPC is contated, you will at least have a list of groups that are interested in expanding. you can't start eliminating if you don't know your choices!

No, sir, I just graduated this Spring! Notice the little "alumna" after the DZ in my signature. ;)

Size of the school is less important than percentage of Greek involvement (i.e, my school is twice the size of DW AlphaGam's and hers probably has 3 times as many Greeks). There are other factors too.