Names and Tautologies
Additional useless words.
hello. i am writing this at NTU’s North Spine while waiting for my sister to finish her class.
Inspiration
after starting the PGDE at NIE last December, i’ve been making almost-daily trips to school for lessons. the only expressway to NIE is the Pan-Island Expressway. the PIE also has road signs directing motorists to SAFTI Military Institute (SAFTI MI).
Setting the context
It is no secret that Singapore loves short forms. In the five sentences above, I have already used five short forms: NTU, PGDE, NIE, PIE, and SAFTI MI.
When saying their names, the first four short forms have to be spelt out – ‘N, T, U’, ‘P, G, D, E’, and so on. They are called initialisms.
There is another category called acronyms – they are not spelt out when read. Instead, they are read like a new word, like ‘NASA’.
You may also know of abbreviations, like ‘Mindef’ (Ministry of Defence) and ‘MinLaw’. When you shorten a word (or a few words), you create a new abbreviation.
Other examples include ‘Prof’ for ‘Professor’ or ‘e-money’ for ‘electronic money.
In Chinese, 中国中央电视台 (China’s state-owned broadcasting corporation) can also be abbreviated to become ‘央视’.
Out of my five short forms, SAFTI MI is a little different – it’s a bit of both. You may already know that ‘SAFTI’ is read like a word (acronym), while MI is spelled out (initialism).
SAFTI
SAFTI MI, or ‘Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute Military Institute’ (? we’ll get to this in a minute), is a place where commissioned SAF officers undergo training. Non-commissioned officers generally train at Pasir Laba Camp, nearby.
Why the mouthful? In the past, there was no ‘MI’. The place was just called SAFTI, and it was an acronym for ‘Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute’. After it was restructured in 1995, ‘SAFTI’ stopped being an acronym. It became a name, just like Dunman or Sheares. One way to rethink it is to see it as Safti and not in all caps.
So, it isn’t really ‘Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute Military Institute’, it’s just Safti (or SAFTI) Military Institute.
Other names
This whole SAFTI thing got me thinking about other names we have in Singapore.
Think about banks like DBS, OCBC and UOB. If you tried to do a regular FAST bank transfer, you’d see ‘DBS BANK LTD’ under the list of all the available FAST banks. But DBS is Development Bank of Singapore, isn’t it? Does that mean it is ‘Development Bank of Singapore Bank Limited’?
The short answer is, DBS doesn’t have that long name anymore. It changed its name to simply ‘DBS Bank’ in 1982. DBS Bank has the same form as McDonalds Bank or Teardrop Bank – DBS is just a name. It just happens to have some history.
Same for OCBC, which began as a merger of three Hokkien banks in 1932. The name was short for ‘Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation’ until 1989, when it changed its marketing name1 to simply ‘OCBC Bank’. Again, ‘OCBC’ no longer means anything, it’s just a name – like Ocbc Bank, except you read out the letters.
UOB has done none of this. They continue to call themselves UOB, which stands for United Overseas Bank. There you have it.
Summing it up
The examples above – SAFTI MI and DBS/OCBC – are examples of organisations which have simply retained their names by simplifying them into mere letters. They keep those letters because they have some historical meaning – each of the three letters ‘D’, ‘B’, and ‘S’ used to stand for a full word. Now, it doesn't.
Thus, saying ‘I am going to DBS Bank’ is correct. Saying ‘I am going to UOB Bank’, eh, I could’ve saved you some time there.
There is one last example, PSA International, which started as the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) in 1964. After changing its name in 1997, the name ‘PSA’ is just ‘PSA’ – it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s just a name.
To further strengthen this point, it’s worth pointing out that they no longer have any ‘authority’, since that work is now done by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
One last thing…
So ‘DBS Bank’ and ‘OCBC Bank’ are both correct – the ‘B’s in those phrases don't mean ‘Bank’. But what about ‘PIE Expressway’? ‘SAFTI MI Institute’? ‘NTU University’? ‘PAP Party’?
That brings us to tautologies2, which means:
saying the same thing twice,
unnecessarily,
in different ways.
Since ATM actually means Automated Teller Machine, ‘ATM machine’ is a tautology. So is ‘GPS system’ (Global Positioning System), ‘PIN number’ (Personal Identification Number), and, my favourite, ‘IP3 Programme’ (Integrated Programme).
Some non-short form tautologies would include ‘to reiterate again’. I must bring up ‘please RSVP’, which some would consider a tautology. Since the borrowed French term is ‘Répondez s'il vous plaît’ (‘please respond’), some feel that the English ‘please’ is unnecessary.
Over time, however, RSVP’s English meaning could change, becoming ‘Respond (to an invitation)’ – without the ‘please’. In that case, I see no harm in saying ‘please RSVP’. Doesn’t hurt to be more polite.
Legally, though, it’s still Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation.
It seems like a very old word, having possibly come from the third century – Latin’s ‘tautologia’. It then went to Greek, ‘ταὐτολογία’.
Note, however, that ‘IB Programme’, or the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) in full, would not be a tautology. Baccalaureate is a kind of exam.