NATO Reporting Names for the latest chinese aircraft.

oringo said:

Fantan is only one letter away from Fantuan (and sounds almost like it if you speak with an accent). It literarilly means rice ball, slang for "useless jerk." Gotta give the NATO some credit for humor.

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I thought Fauntuan meant rice bucket.

Fantan is only one letter away from Fantuan (and sounds almost like it if you speak with an accent). It literarilly means rice ball, slang for "useless jerk." Gotta give the NATO some credit for humor.

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Really? I thought the slang for "useless jerk" is "fantong".

"Finback" is a type of large whale, so it's actually an insult when you call a fighter a whale. (i.e. the fighter (F-8) move like a whale).

the ultimate insult: Mig-15 faggot

eecsmaster said:

the ultimate insult: Mig-15 faggot

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'Fagot' also means a bundle of sticks or branches, usually meant for use as firewood. It is also a kind of British meatball.

eecsmaster said:

the ultimate insult: Mig-15 faggot

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The Tu-22 Blinder was originally assigned the reporting name "Beauty" but it was dropped on the grounds that NATO didn't want to appear too complimentary about a Soviet plane, the next choice was "Bullshot," but that was dropped as it was open to misinterpretation. Given the Blinder's problematic service history many Soviet aircrew would have thought it would have been more appropriate!

I recall decade ago, aviation magazine claim that most names for soviet aircraft are choose from computer.
even all names for automobile such as lexus were chhose from computer.

Mean choosen by computer or named after computers?

Well the car names are not choosen by computers, but marketing people. Usually the names are form some fancy languages and its checked form every marketing country that that name isen't anyhting weird form its national language. For example the Volkswagens van Perspano is know as Transporter in here as the orginal name mean something like ass-fuck in our language

Just curious, is there an unoficial term for the chinese as a whole in the US? Just as Krauts, Ivan, Charlie ...
I mean no disrespect, it just came to my mind.

Scratch said:

Just curious, is there an unoficial term for the chinese as a whole in the US? Just as Krauts, Ivan, Charlie ...
I mean no disrespect, it just came to my mind.

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I think its Chicom for Chinese Communists.
In Iraq, the insurgents are called Hajj.