What's in a Name?

American code names since 1989 have been designed for PR value.

— Matthew Stibbe

Few members of the public know that, when the White House couldn't find a name for its vaccine rapid-development program, 14-year-old Barron Trump came up with "Operation Warp Speed." 

With a nod of the head, his family voted to adopt the name around the Sunday evening dinner table.

The program has delivered, but the name has not, turning millions of Americans off to the vaccine.

The worry they consistently invoke: the vaccine was rushed, and therefore isn't safe.

Now the hapless Administration is scrambling to launch a $300 million trust-building ad campaign.

If only Trump had been more at home on Pennsylvania Avenue, and less on Madison Avenue, he'd have listened to his career scientists instead of a 14-year-old. 

Many more Americans would be sanguine about their shots.

Career scientists, after all, named "The Manhattan Project, "Gemini," and "The Genome Project."

A perfectly pedestrian code-name like "Luke," "Operation Jade" or "The Bethesda Project" would have calmed nerves, saved lives, saved money, and sped reopening.

We can thank the Germans for pioneering the use of code-names for military operations during World War I. 

Their use really took off during World War II, when Churchill—a man of words (and deeds)—took the time to instruct his government on the wise choice of code-names.

In a typewritten memo, Churchill advised that operations should not be named by code-words that convey overconfidence; disparage the operation; trivialize the operation; or reveal the nature of the operation.

He advised, instead, that code-names derive from ordinary words used out of context; or from proper names, such as those of the gods and heroes of antiquity, famous racehorses, and British and American warriors of the past.

"Care should be taken in all this process," Churchill concluded. "An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters."

In keeping with Churchill's dictums, Alan Turing's codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park was named "Station X;" the invasion of North Africa was named "Operation Torch;" and the Yalta Conference was named "Argonaut."

Churchill himself came up with the code-name for D-Day, "Operation Overlord."

"American code names since 1989 have been designed for PR value," says brand consultant Matthew Stibbe. 

And the danger therein? 

That the name undoes the accomplishment.