Code name

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A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial counter-espionage to protect secret projects and the like from business rivals, or to give names to projects whose marketing name has not yet been determined. Another reason for the use of names and phrases in the military is that they transmit with a lower level of cumulative errors over a walkie-talkie or radio link than actual names.

The Achaemenid Empire under Darius I employed a network of spies called the King’s Eye or the King’s Ear.^[1][2] These agents operated under anonymity, and “King’s Eye” was not a specific person but rather a code name for the intelligence network that reported directly to the king.^[2]

The Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca reportedly used coded references for his agents and informants in Rome and among allied territories.^[3] Some sources suggest that key figures in his intelligence operations were identified using nicknames instead of real names to avoid detection by Roman counterintelligence.^[3]

Julius Caesar used ciphers to encode messages and likely employed code names for key operatives.^[4] His famous Caesar cipher (simple letter-shifting encryption) was used to disguise military commands.^[4] He also referred to Marc Antony and other generals with shortened or altered names in correspondence to prevent interception from revealing strategic plans.^[4]

During the Jewish revolts against Rome, leaders and messengers used symbolic or misleading names in communications.^[5][6] The Dead Sea Scrolls reference figures such as the “Teacher of Righteousness” and the “Wicked Priest,” which may have functioned as code names to obscure real identities.^[5][6]

The Byzantine Empire’s intelligence agents, particularly under Emperor Justinian I, operated under codenames or titles rather than real identities.^[7] Procopius suggests that spies within the Persian and Gothic courts were assigned allegorical names to protect them from discovery.^[7]

During

• Reference: Glossary of Names
  U.S. Army in World War II
  – Washington Command Post: The Operations Division
  • World War II Allied Operations[10]
  • Abbreviations, Acronyms, Codewords, Terms Appearing in WW II Histories and Documents^[11]
  • Information from original files held at
    The National Archives (formerly The Public Record Office
    ) which hold the publicly available records of central government for the UK

Ewen Montagu, a British Naval intelligence officer, discloses in Beyond Top Secret Ultra that during World War II, Nazi Germany habitually used ad hoc code names as nicknames which often openly revealed or strongly hinted at their content or function.

Some German code names:

• Golfplatz (German for "golf course") – Britain, employed by the Abwehr
• Samland – The United States (from Uncle Sam), employed by the Abwehr
• Heimdall (a god whose power was "to see for a hundred miles") – long-range radar
• SIS
  inferred that the device used a single beam and from that determined, correctly, how it must work. A counter-system was quickly created which made Wotan useless.
• Operation Seelöwe (Sea-lion) – plans to invade Britain (lions being prominent in the coat of arms of the United Kingdom
  )
• Operation Barbarossa (Frederick Barbarossa) – plans to go east and invade the Soviet Union

Conversely,

Although German and Italian aircraft were not given code names by their Allied opponents, in 1942, Captain Frank T. McCoy, an intelligence officer of the

Winston Churchill was particular about the quality of code names. He insisted that code words, especially for dangerous operations, would be not overly grand nor petty nor common. One emotional goal he mentions is to never have to report to anyone that their son "was killed in an operation called 'Bunnyhug' or 'Ballyhoo'."[12]

Presently, British forces tend to use one-word names, presumably in keeping with their post-World War II policy of reserving single words for operations and two-word names for exercises. British operation code names are usually randomly generated by a computer and rarely reveal its components or any political implications unlike the American names (e.g., the 2003 invasion of Iraq was called "Operation Telic" compared to Americans' "Operation Iraqi Freedom", obviously chosen for propaganda rather than secrecy). Americans prefer two-word names, whereas the Canadians and Australians use either. The French military currently prefer names drawn from nature (such as colors or the names of animals), for instance Opération Daguet ("brocket deer") or Opération Baliste ("Triggerfish"). The CIA uses alphabetical prefixes to designate the part of the agency supporting an operation.

In many cases with the United States, the first word of the name has to do with the intent of the program. Programs with "have" as the first word, such as Have Blue for the stealth fighter development, are developmental programs, not meant to produce a production aircraft. Programs that start with Senior, such as Senior Trend for the F-117, are for aircraft in testing meant to enter production.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States code names are commonly set entirely in upper case.^[13] This is not done in other countries, though for the UK in British documents the code name is in upper case while operation is shortened to OP e.g., "Op. TELIC".

This presents an opportunity for a bit of public-relations (

• To uniquely identify the project within the organization. Code names are frequently chosen to be outside the normal business/domain jargon that the organization uses, in order to not conflict with established terminology.
• To assist with maintaining secrecy of the project against rival concerns. Some corporations routinely change project names in order to further confuse competitors.
• When the goal of the project is to develop one or more commercial products, use of a code name allows the eventual choice of product nomenclature (the name the product(s) are marketed and sold under) to be decoupled from the development effort. This is especially important when one project generates multiple products, or multiple projects are needed to produce a single product. This allows for subprojects to be given a separate identity from the main project.
• To decouple an early phase of a development effort (which may have failed) from a subsequent phase (which may be given a "fresh start") as a political tool.
• To prevent casual observers from concluding that a pre-release version is a new release of the product, thus helping reduce confusion.

Different organizations have different policies regarding the use and publication of project code names. Some companies take great pains to never discuss or disclose project code names outside of the company (other than with outside entities who have a need to know, and typically are bound with a

operating system until 2013, where the code name was different from the release name.

Notable code names

This section may contain excessive or irrelevant examples. Please help improve the article by adding descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. (October 2023)

Military

• Operation Anthropoid – assassination of top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich
  in Prague
• B-52 bombing campaign during the Vietnam War
• Operation Barbarossa – German invasion of the Soviet Union
• Operation
  Hotel Taj Mahal
  , Mumbai
• Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab, India
  .
• Operation Market Garden – failed invasion of Germany (1944)
• Operation Morero – South African Special Forces sent to the Central African Republic to protect president François Bozizé.
• U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group
  .
  • "Geronimo", the code name for Osama bin Laden during
    Operation Neptune's Spear
• Operation Desert Storm – The US code name of the airland conflict from 17 January 1991, through 11 April 1991 in Kuwait during the First Gulf War
  .
• Operation Overlord – Allied invasion of Normandy
• Operation Rolling Thunder – the sustained bombing campaign conducted against North Vietnam by the United States and South Vietnam
• Operation Sea Lion – the planned invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany which was never carried out
• Operation Shakti – (Pokhran-II) refers to the series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army's Pokhran
  Test Range in May 1998. It was initiated with the detonation of one fusion and three fission bombs.
• Operation Torch – British-American invasion of North Africa in 1942
• nuclear weapons program during World War II
• MKULTRA
  – CIA project (an attempt at mind control technology & technique)
• Pokhran-I), was an assigned code name of India's first nuclear weapon explosion, which took place on 18 May 1974. The device was detonated by the Indian Army in the long-constructed army base, Pokhran
  Test Range. It was also the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
• Project-706 (with Chagai-I and Chagai-II) – an early Pakistani secret code name for its nuclear weapons programme during the Cold War
• Tank – originally a code name adopted in 1915 by the British government for the first tracked armoured vehicles, which were then under development
• Tube Alloys – British nuclear program
• USSR

• SVO, euphemism for 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

• 90 nm generations under the K8 micro-architecture after the name of cities around the world. For the CPUs under the Phenom brand, the names of stars were used as code names. For Opteron server CPUs and platforms, cities related to the Ferrari Formula One team
  were used. Mobile platforms are named after birds (except for Puma). For example:
  • Single-core
    Athlon 64 FX
     : Newcastle, Venice, San Diego and Lima
  • Dual-core
    Athlon 64 FX
    : Manchester, Toledo, Windsor and Brisbane
  • Phenom CPUs: Agena (
    Lambda Orionis), Rana (Delta Eridani), Regor (Gamma Velorum
    )
  • Opteron CPUs: Barcelona, Shanghai, São Paulo, Istanbul
  • Server platforms: Catalunya, Fiorano, Maranello
  • Mobile CPUs: Griffin, Lion, Swift
  • Mobile platforms: Kite, Puma, Shrike, Eagle
• 10.8).^[14]
  Other former code names include:
  • Composers, such as
    Gershwin, after George Gershwin
    .
  • Women's names, e.g. Jennifer (rumored for the Macintosh IIx), and Lisa.
  • Varieties of apples, including Cortland for the Apple IIGS, and Macintosh (from McIntosh).
  • Carl Sagan, which was used for the
    two lawsuits against Apple
    related to that usage, and lost both, reaching an out-of-court settlement with the company.
• Intel often names CPU projects after rivers in the American West, particularly in the state of Oregon (where most of Intel's CPU projects are designed). Examples include Willamette, Deschutes, Yamhill, Tualatin, and Clackamas. See List of Intel codenames.
• Microsoft often names projects (in particular, versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems) after place names. Examples include Chicago (Windows 95), Daytona (Windows NT 3.5), Memphis (Windows 98), Whistler (Windows XP) and Longhorn (Windows Vista).
• For a period of time,
  Mozilla Firefox
  browser:
  • Firefox 2.0: Bon Echo
  • Firefox 3.0: Gran Paradiso
  • Firefox 3.5: Shiretoko
  • Firefox 3.6:
    Namoroka
  • Firefox 4.0:
    Tumucumaque
  • Firefox pre-beta: Aurora
  • Firefox trunk builds: Nightly
• Nintendo often uses code names for new consoles. The best-known is that of Wii, which was code-named Revolution for over a year. Others include the GameCube's code name of Dolphin, the Game Boy Advance's code name of Atlantis, the Nintendo 64 as Project Reality, the DS code name Project Nitro, the Game Boy Micro code name Oxygen, the Wii U code name Project Cafe, and the Switch as NX.
• Return of the Jedi was code-named "Blue Harvest" while in production and principal photography. This was reportedly to prevent disruption by fans and the media as well as to avoid price gouging by local merchants and vendors.
• The Chamber of Secrets sequel of the Harry Potter film series was code-named "Incident of 57th Street" to disguise the production from its increasingly rabid fanbase, who would seek out filming locations and disrupt production.

• List of computer technology code names
• CIA cryptonyms
• Code word (figure of speech)
• List of U.S. Department of Defense and partner code names
• List of Microsoft codenames
• Military Operations listed by code name
• Rainbow Codes
• NATO reporting name
• Pseudonym, the term for a code name when applied to a single person
• Secret Service codename
• Sensitive Compartmented Information
• Working title