Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I am working on a story about a special unit of soldiers that was created to deal with extra special threats to both national and world security. I need a name for the group and have run into a wall. Jeremy Robinson has his group called the Chess team which is part of a bigger organization called Endgame. Another writer, David Lynn Golemon, has The Even Group. I am looking for a name for my unit so any suggestions are welcome .....

Special Threats Unit Defenders [or Division] (S.T.U.D.S) haha!

That's all I've got

U.S. Special Forces paratroopers originated the term Chalk for a stick of soldiers' order leaving a perfectly good airplane in midair. Stick comes from how unguided bombs are held in a bomb bay, on a stick. When the stick was released they all fell off. Stick means a squad in that context. The term chalk derived from the practice of marking paratroopers' shoulders with chalk so when they stood up and hooked up they were in the preferred drop sequence.

Similarly HALO team, for high altitude, low open parachuting. SEAL for sea, air, and land. Add space and what might that be: SESAL, which could become Cecil phonetically.

Etc.

there was the fictional CTU for Counter Terrorism Unit. How about calling it the STU - Special Threats Unit or BTU for Bio Threats Unit .....

STU sounds good to me.

If you wanted to play with the acronym, you could make it the Special Threats Field Unit. Or the unit members could have a running in-joke of adding various words starting with F to the unit's name. It sounds like the sort of joke the military types of my acquaintance would get a kick out of.

(BTU just makes me think British Thermal Unit.)

I really like STFU, but that leads me to what I was going to say before I saw that post: personally I'm pretty sick of acronyms for things like this. I think that dead horse has been beaten enough already, especially with blunt instruments like "Field Intelligence Strike Team" or "War Operations Logistics Field Procedure Attack Commando Kabal". Unless you're going to have some fun with it--STFU being a good example--I'd try to come up with something else, and even then it depends on the kind of tone you're going with. In my experience, military blokes tend to have a bit of a sense of humor at their own expense, so even if things are pretty serious, it could still work.

On the other hand, there's also giving them a real name. I always have trouble with this sort of thing, so I'll just try to think of some non-acronym special ops teams from fiction: The Untouchables. The Expendables. Indigo Prime. The Iron Grenadiers. The Wreckers. Iscariot. The Coil. The Legion of Doom. Dumbledore's Army. Science Ninja Team. (I'm sure higher literature has some more examples.)

@John - Granted, I don't have much patience either with the acronym first - name second (and usually horribly contorted to fit the acronym) approach. However, there's no denying the military loves their acronyms, especially TLAs. It'd add a nice dash of realism to Preacher's fictional unit if they had an acronym, IMO, even if they also had a "real" name that they used more often.

I agree with LizV that an acronym would add realism. If you don't like that you could try doing something like Psy-Ops, which is Psychological Operations. If you go with the The Expendables/Indigo Prime type of name, I would suggest you use that as a self-proclaimed name for the team. Possibly something they said jokingly, but stuck as a name. Like you said, them having fun with it.