Code name

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.

"Codenames" redirects here. For the board game, see Codenames (board game).

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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 of the project against rival concerns. Some corporations routinely change project names in order to further confuse competitors.

secrecy

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.

A project code name is a code name (usually a single word, short phrase or acronym) which is given to a project being developed by industry, academia, government, and other concerns.

Project code names are typically used for several reasons:

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 non-disclosure agreement). Other companies never use them in official or formal communications, but widely disseminate project code names through informal channels (often in an attempt to create a marketing buzz for the project). Still others (such as Microsoft) discuss code names publicly, and routinely use project code names on beta releases and such, but remove them from final product(s). In the case of Windows 95, the code name "CHICAGO" was left embedded in the INF File structure and remained required through Windows Me. At the other end of the spectrum, Apple includes the project code names for Mac OS X as part of the official name of the final product, a practice that was started in 2002 with Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar". Google and the AOSP also used this for their Android operating system until 2013, where the code name was different from the release name.

– assassination of top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in Prague

Operation Anthropoid

– United States Air Force B-52 bombing campaign during the Vietnam War

Operation Arc Light

– German invasion of the Soviet Union

Operation Barbarossa

Operation – began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November when India's National Security Guards (NSG) conducted Operation Black Tornado to flush out the attackers from the Hotel Taj Mahal, Mumbai

Black Tornado

– was an Indian military operation which took place 3–8 June 1984, in order to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab, India.

Operation Blue Star

– failed invasion of Germany (1944)

Operation Market Garden

– South African Special Forces sent to the Central African Republic to protect president François Bozizé.

Operation Morero

Operation Neptune Spear

Operation Neptune's Spear

– The US code name of the airland conflict from 17 January 1991, through 11 April 1991 in Kuwait during the First Gulf War.

Operation Desert Storm

– Allied invasion of Normandy

Operation Overlord

– the sustained bombing campaign conducted against North Vietnam by the United States and South Vietnam

Operation Rolling Thunder

– the planned invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany which was never carried out

Operation Sea Lion

– (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 Shakti

– British-American invasion of North Africa in 1942

Operation Torch

(with Trinity, Little Boy, and Fat Man) – U.S. nuclear weapons program during World War II

Manhattan Project

– CIA project (an attempt at mind control technology & technique)

MKULTRA

– (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.

Smiling Buddha

(with Chagai-I and Chagai-II) – an early Pakistani secret code name for its nuclear weapons programme during the Cold War

Project-706

– originally a code name adopted in 1915 by the British government for the first tracked armoured vehicles, which were then under development

Tank

– British nuclear program

Tube Alloys

- Winston Churchill's plan to invade the Soviet Union USSR

Operation Unthinkable

CIA cryptonyms

Code word (figure of speech)

List of Microsoft codenames

Military Operations listed by code name

Rainbow Codes

NATO reporting name

the term for a code name when applied to a single person

Pseudonym

Secret Service codename

Sensitive Compartmented Information

Working title

(2005). Code Names: Deciphering US Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press. ISBN 978-1-58642-083-3.

Arkin, William M.

Gehrs-Pahl, Andreas; Parsch, Andreas (4 October 2006). . www.designation-systems.net. Retrieved 25 April 2020.

"Code Names for U.S. Military Projects and Operations"

– Broadcast on Democracy Now! January 27, 2005.

Code Names: A Look Behind Secret U.S. Military Plans in the Middle East, Africa and at Home

Sieminski, Gregory C. (Autumn 1995). (PDF). PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly. XXV (3). Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, Pennsylvania: United States Army War College: 81-98. ISSN 0031-1723. Archived from the original on 7 June 2010. Retrieved 25 April 2020.