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Maybe it is just me but spelling my first and last names has been a struggle since I came to America 27 years ago as a foreign medical graduate.
In a prior post, I told the story of a foreign medical graduate who had just arrived to begin his internal medicine residency at a busy city hospital.
That story is pretty much my own.
As I explained in that post, the terminology has been changed from “foreign” medical graduate to “international” medical graduate. I am not sure why the terminology has changed, but whatever the impetus for the change, I have thought the latter term is more humane, and perhaps less intimidating. (In my opinion, the word “foreign” is perhaps psychologically provocative.)
The struggles facing foreign medical graduates depends on both the individual and where they came from, ranging from unfamiliarity with the American system, to working with different measurement units, to the social shock that any newcomer is encounters as he or she arrives to a new country, new culture and new system.
For many foreign medical graduates, even your last name can present a struggle.
Spelling one’s name, over and over again, can be exhausting. To be perfectly honest, I am still performing this ritual 27 years after arriving to America. I have tried to develop the habit of handing my driver’s license or work badge to any individual asking for the spelling of my name.
One intriguing issue is the difficulty of spelling names or words over the phone. The phonation of the letters can be challenging. For example, the letters B and D are confused over the phone. Similarly, M vs. N and S vs. F can also be tricky, so people try to facilitate the phone communication by following the letter with a word: “boy” for B, “dog” for D. “Mary” for M and “Nancy” for N. The problem is that these letter codes are make-shift and variable, and they can also be somewhat problematic. Perhaps an individual may not like “dog” for D, but rather “David.”
I found out that this spelling dilemma is a real issue, with science behind it!
In the early 1990s, I was travelling to Cyprus with a friend to sit for the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates exam in Larnaca. Then the first Gulf War erupted, and my friend and I were stranded.
Before the era of the internet, one would have to visit travel agencies to book or make changes on flight reservations; doing that over the phone was also quite an ordeal. My friend and I stopped at a travel agency to make a change to our tickets. The office was very large and so busy. There were numerous agents helping customers; the agents were loudly speaking in Greek over the phone. I was so intrigued by the language that they used: They would spell each word in a standard, but bizarre way (at least, bizarre to me).
The agents used “alpha” for A, “bravo” for B, “Charlie” for C, “delta” for D, and so on. This avoided the struggle between ”apple” and “Andy” for A, ”boy” or “Betty” for B, and so on.
I then learned that this is the standard code used in aviation called the phonetic alphabet. It is meant to avoid any confusion with airports, runways, gates and so on.
It was so amusing to hear the travel agents say those codes, and especially in Greek! It guaranteed that no confusion between the letters will occur. The codes are international and well-known. No one will feel offended; except perhaps for some who may feel uncomfortable with the W code (whiskey), or people who are not fans of the Yankees.
I have never tried to use these codes in my day-to-day conversations for spelling other words over the phone. I am not sure what people would think if I were to say “Romeo” for R and “Juliet" for J.