[AOII*Azra-elle]

Originally Posted by irishpipes

I know there is an old, old thread about this, but I am not good at the search function.

AOII does not use any order. We allow our colonies to select their own designation. The desgnation must also then stand for the chapter sub-motto. My chapter at the University of Illinois wanted to use Iota for Illinois, so they chose the sub-motto iso fore which is Greek for sharing equal burdens. Some use an English sub-motto, for example Alpha Gamma's is "always genuine" amd Tau Delta's is "true to duty."

Most of our oldest chapters are our single-lettered ones, but those are not in order, and actually some of our oldest 24 chose double-letter designations, and the single letter "Mu" was never used to name a chapter. So in order of founding, our oldest chapters are:

Alpha (Barnard/Columbia)
Pi (Sophie Newcomb/Tulane)
Nu (NYU)
Omicron (Tennessee)
Kappa (Randolph-Macon Women's College)
Zeta (Nebraska)
Sigma (Cal-Berkeley)
Theta (DePauw)
Beta (Brown)
Delta (Tufts)
Gamma (Maine)
Epsilon (Cornell)
Rho (Northwestern)
Lambda (Stanford)
Iota (Illinois)
Tau (Minnesota)
Chi (Syracuse)
Upsilon (Washington)
Nu Kappa (Southern Methodist)
Beta Phi (Indiana)
Eta (Wisonsin)
Alpha Phi (Montana State)
Nu Omicron (Vanderbilt)
Psi (Penn)
Phi (Kansas)
Omega (Miami Ohio)
Omicron Pi (Michigan)
Alpha Sigma (Oregon)
Xi (Oklahoma)

This is true. My collegiate chapter was at U. of Northern Colorado. We called ourselves Epsilon Gamma. It stood for Ever Giving, Ever Growing. There is a secret meaning, but only us EG's know what it is!