Where do funny abbreviations and decoding of familiar abbreviations come from

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

In tsarist old-regime Russia, it was not accepted to abbreviate the names of departments, ministries and departments, and even more so universities and academies, they managed somehow. Talk longer, write too, but somehow it sounded more beautiful.

Probably they came to us from America

Across the ocean, there are indeed many abbreviations. We started with the name of the country, which was almost immediately abbreviated USA, and then went: GI, USS, USN, USAF, CIA, FBI, NY and the like.

In Europe, too, capital letters were rarely used instead of whole sayings, except that in Austria-Hungary they sometimes wrote “K und K” instead of “imperial-Kaiser”. Well, okay, they are forgiven, German words are generally long and look like, according to A. P. Chekhov's well-aimed joke, an elongated rail. But after the victory of October in November, all sorts of proletcults, cultural enlightenment, educational programs, people's commissariat of education, people's commissariat of internal affairs and other consonances that are hard to perceive by the Russian ear, including the Gulag, appeared. There were also very funny abbreviations, over which the surviving intellectuals of the old formation made fun with might and main. If, of course, they were up to jokes.

The first Soviet abbreviations

In fact, in the post-revolutionary years, painted in red not only by the banners of the victorious proletariat, but also by shed blood, there was little fun. All sorts of Cheka, Central Committee, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Red Army, "ROST" and other not very funny abbreviations were more likely to frighten with incomprehensibility. The exception is, perhaps, the well-known title of the post of Deputy Commander for Naval Affairs, which sounds very cheerful in abbreviation, albeit cruelly - Deputy Commissar. People still tried to joke even then. “I went to the CEC,” the husband said to his wife as he left home. She looked at him with respect. The point of Hochma is that he did not pronounce the letter “r”, but meant the circus. Many also knew firsthand about how the Central Committee ticked and the Cheka ticked. But all this was, in the words of one Marxist, symptoms of the "infantile disease of leftism." Indeed, many literate people were “repaired”, and then they began an educational program with the forces of the entire People’s Commissariat for Education of Eresefeser with the support of the Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee. Then, under Stalin, many things were corrected, and even the hard-to-pronounce Red Army, created by Trotsky, was renamed the Soviet Army. It's really more beautiful and clearer.

But Faina Ranevskaya once called one honored worker of culture an abbreviation made up of the initial letters of this honorary title, two for each word. It turned out very Soviet and funny.

Research institutes

In the fifties, due to the establishment of manyscientific research institutes, which have become a haven for a large number of diploma holders who stubbornly did not want to work, the names acquired amazing ornateness. The SYPHILIS Research Institute was not at all engaged in the development of medical methods for the treatment of venereal diseases. It was the name of the Siberian Institute of Philosophy and History. The abbreviated name of the Institute of Fur Breeding, Animal Husbandry and Hunting also caused a smile among those who understood. The funniest abbreviations hinted at the total unconventional orientation of employees, including the leadership at the All-Russian Scientific Research Geological Institute (VseGeI), or (with some emphasis), at the general genius of those at the Geographic and Economic Research Institute (GENII).

Two quite serious institutions involved in the life support of underwater vehicles (the second - manned) had funny abbreviations. There are more examples of such a combination, for example, in the Zhytomyr Regional Party Archive.

What can I say about individual institutions, institutions, when the entire ministry in charge of education and science in the country is abbreviated as "IMAGE".

Where students study

Higher educational institutions were not inferior either. Funny abbreviations of universities served as the subject of student jokes, however, rather monotonous. Engineering and construction institutes, if they were lucky enough to be in Moscow, Odessa or even Kyiv, were decently called (MISI, OISI, KISI), here in Poltava or Penza … and if in Simferopol or Sverdlovsk, then moremore fun.

An attempt to rename the MAI into the University of Long-Range Aviation and Cosmonautics lasted only two days, again in Moscow, of course. Do not transfer him to Saratov because of an indecent reduction. In addition, the name of the Moscow University of Road and Automobile Communications looks identical, one can be confused with one another.

In the 1980s, students had to take an exam on AIDS, which had just become known. The subject - the former "Marxism-Leninism" - was called the socio-political ideas of the twentieth century.

Reverse processes

Funny abbreviations are enough to see and read, they do not require imagination. But to see something new in an ordinary and familiar combination of letters is no longer so easy. It takes ingenuity, ingenuity and time. These qualities were fully possessed by employees of numerous research institutes, who acquired erudition in the course of work and developed mentally. Calling a junior researcher (emens) a little-needed employee meant showing remarkable knowledge of the orders prevailing in most research institutes, but the ecens (the same, only the senior one) became aerobatics - completely unnecessary. Funny transcripts of abbreviations have become a real sport. Sometimes for the sake of a red word they sin against the truth. Trains in Russia are good (if there is something to compare with), but some wit painted Russian Railways as a desire to “be glad that you arrived alive.”

Modern abbreviations, funny and not so funny

Today funny abbreviationsthere are, and there are many. Sometimes they happen suddenly and accidentally, out of good intentions. In other cases, they are created intentionally in order to shock, to attract attention, in general, from commercial and advertising motives. And sometimes there is a direct flattery at all.

Otherwise, how can one explain such a choice of words in the name of the Penza Universal Technopark of Innovative Nanotechnologies, so that in abbreviation it is read as PUTIN? Respect for the president and the country should be shown by success in science and technology, and not by displaying his name on the facade. In addition, he himself would hardly have approved such an approach to spending budget funds, which was expressed in the dismantling (in three days) of the inscription. This is not funny.