I've seen copies of The Crescent online as old as 1904, and the writers always refer to themselves as Gamma Phis, so I've chalked it up as pure, old tradition. I would dearly love to know if there was a specific reason back in the day, or if it just sounded good and caught on! Some of the local collegians wanted to use just Gamma instead of Gamma Phi in a rap they wrote for convention this summer, but some alumnae set them straight.