"My question is are they actually looking at this? With shrinking budgets, And the country with Covid in debt up to the eyeballs. If there is a serious attempt to rename our service personnel you would be a fool to imagine it does not come without a cost. The simple and unfashionable reasoning behind changing Junior Tech to SAC Tech required new rank tabs producing, all the rank posters redoing, all paperwork relating to ranks replacing and the list goes on, Pensions, pay etc, one would like to know how much that exercise cost and for what benefit? The current system has been in place for decades, why change it now?"

Nutloose,

I would suggest that the only person 'looking' at this is the OP with an obvious agenda.

Any reference these days to members of the armed forces usually uses that very title, members of the armed forces, not a silly old fashioned phrase like soldiers, sailors and airmen.

That phrase encompasses the uniformed military, Civil Servants, Auxiliaries, Reservists, Full Time Reservists, Civilian employees and contractors, who actually make up the modern armed forces in 2020.

To be honest so does Officers and Other Ranks. Both gender neutral.

Anorak on.... ;)

But, of course, prior to May 1912 the Navy had it's own fledgling aviation (started circa 1909) which was then misappropriated by the Pongoes to join their own growing presence in the air to form the RFC in 1912. Due to the, I suspect, "un-officer like qualities" of the Navy element, the Navy was turfed out of the RFC in 1914 and the RNAS was formally set up before another attempt was made in 1918 to form the RAF from both the RFC and RNAS.

The story goes on (and on and on and on and.......) with the RNAS (those who liked living in ships) escaping again in 1924 (finally confirmed in 1936) and the AAC (those who liked living in tents) returning to canvas in 1942 - including the ACC standing down for a while 1949 - 1957 (presumably due to the excessive number of Polo matches being played during those years!). This left those who liked living in 5* hotels to front up the RAF. Interestingly, the arguments for the 3 aviation Services existing as 3 discrete entities rumbles on...........

Anyway, anorak off!!!! :ok: As I say, "nowt changes"! Cheers, H 'n' H

True. Though it misses out Civil Servants, Civilian employees and contractors, all of whom are a huge part of anything that the services do these days.

You mean Per ardua ad mixas

I gather Aviators has already been decided upon. As someone mentioned early in these post, new No2 uniform.
Polo shirts with walking type trousers.

Herod despairs

Soldiers, sailors and crabs?
Soldiers, sailors and hotel reviewers?

Doubtless in some nice acrylic suitable for melting and sticking to the skin in an explosion....

Aviator means someone who flies, as a pilot.
Arguable, perhaps, especially since the first military personnel to be airborne in battle were the balloon observer/signallers.

Ref the slide into historic facts, I have a WAFU friend, yes some can achieve that status, who goes on about the "Senior" Service. He goes quiet when I point out to him that the Fleet Air Arm ceased to be the Fleet Air Arm of The Royal Air Force as late as 1937.

If that were true, however bizarre it would almost certainly appear to most real aviators, it would bring about a whole new dimension for the old adage, "aviate, navigate, communicate" - "prevaricate" perhaps, or some other such word to cover those whom I believe Beagle usually refers to as "blunties".:rolleyes:
​
Presumably you go even quieter when your "WAFU friend" patiently points out what the expression the Senior Service really means!:D

Jack

I certainly do. Facts is facts. And he can count.

Packet of Fags?

CG

:ok: - although that knowledge suggests you must be older than I thought!:)

Jack

Presumably that’s when SHQ has had to open on a Wednesday afternoon and miss their sport?

Since when did we risk life and limb wearing no2s? Probably the last time was when the shiny fleet wore them on the flight deck.

We will soon need gender neutral terms for Warrant Officers and Officers.... Sir and Ma'am just don't cut it in the modern world.

Ma’am could become Ma’amite...... you either love it or loathe it depending on your preferences ;)

Yes a little WRAF on the VC10 managed to weld her knickers to her butt as the friction of the slide during a test melted the nylon they were made out off. Poor lass was in agony and the smell of burning nylon I’ll never forget.

In Star Trek they call everybody Sir...

Grudgingly, we'll have to give this one (at least in aviation terms) to the Pongoes who were conducting balloon trials at Woolwich back in 1878 with the Navy picking the theme up in 1908 when they finally started looking seriously at Samuel Cody's kites, and shortly thereafter, into airships.

As you say, Wwyvern, there was that "unfortunate interlude" 1918 - 1936 as well as the previous "skirmish" 1912 - 1914 but 1908 was when it all started to take off (as it were) in the Navy and, once the Admiralty had got the concept, they really seemed to go for it.

I like to put it all down to a case of "You can't keep a good dog down" when it comes to the WAFUs remaining as a separate fighting entity................................! :ok:

But I'm sure others will have their own views!!!! :E Cheers, H 'n' H

The Canadian Forces had very interesting terminology when I was a pilot trainee in boot camp. I remember studying the QR & Os one day and see the formulae for married personnel household moving allowances - and came across the phrase 'when an officer or man is married to another officer or man....'

I am all for gender-neutral naming - but what about NOTAMs? In a futuristic novel I published back in 2016 I proposed the term 'NOTAPs' where P = Personnel.

Just wondering...

Go German and English... Herr and Her sound the same.

I’ve thought long and hard about this and if we want to be inclusive of our collective work forces then neither Soldier, Sailor or Aviator is appropriate. Why?

Soldier - implies that everyone in the British Army is intimately involved with closing and killing their enemy on the ground - they aren’t.

Sailor - implies that everyone in the Royal Navy has an at sea role - they don’t. Also, what about the Royal Marines? Sailors? I think not!

Aviator - implies that everyone in the Royal Air Force operates an aircraft delivering Air Power - they don’t.

It is pure elitism if we use these 3x nouns that just does not encompass the 3 Services’ Whole Force and the Chiefs need to all get their heads around the job diversity of their people. I would offer that “Members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces” is a far more inclusive term if we really want to get it right without missing out large chunks of the individual Services’ people.

But then you would have to include parts of the police under that heading etc.

An interesting rundown although, to apply some perspective, virtually every person joining the Royal Navy, and Royal Marines, is liable for sea service.

So far as the use of "Aviators" is concerned, perhaps a perfectly gender-neutral alternative expression would be "Oakleys"......:cool:

Jack

LJ,

Disagree. The dictionary definition of ‘soldier’ has nothing to do with ‘closing with and killing the enemy’: the word quite literally means ‘one who serves in an army’. The definition of ‘sailor’ is indeed related to seafaring, but can you point to more than a very slack handful of RN roles where there is absolutely no chance ever of being ordered to serve afloat, even if only on attachment? Both of those words are gender-neutral, have centuries’ worth of common usage behind them, and are readily understood by everyone. The idea that they should be dropped just because the RAF a) thinks it needs to, and b) can’t, come up with a better alternative to ‘airmen and airwomen’ leaves me absolutely stone cold, I’m afraid, and I’m not even a soldier or a sailor.

I’m of the view that if there is no existing word that works for the RAF - ‘aviator‘ is just wrong, especially in a service where (like it or not) the long term future will see a greater proportion of uninhabited platforms - then a new ‘made up’ word should be created. But ‘airmen and airwomen’ is just fine by me. It means that anyone saying it automatically spends more time talking about the Air Force than the other services :E and it even subtly advertises the fact that all roles are open to women.

The word ‘mankind’ includes all members of the species. Therefore, this is a analogous to ‘airman’ applying to all who serve in an Air Force. Any sensible English speaker knows that ‘airman’ applies to all.

I am a total grammar pedant and am a stickler for unambiguous descriptions. However, even I acknowledge common interpretations and meaning such as this.

On a different but related point I understand that the desire to rename the RAF College 'The Royal Air Force Academy Cranwell' has now been dropped because someone has pointed out that the acronym (RAFAC) has already been taken by the air cadets...

This about sums it up....

Many will sympathise with that, but I fear that the only people who can now make that argument and have any chance of getting away with it are our elected masters. It would need one of them to stand up and say “enough of all this: this is how it’s going to be“. I suspect there are political analysts working out whether it’s worth the Tories taking such a stand (on cultural issues in general, not this specific one!) to win votes among the ‘no-nonsense‘ traditional working classes. They probably don’t have many votes to lose among those concerned about social justice, let’s face it. But too much ground has already been given on these matters among the higher echelons of officialdom (Civil Service and military) for anyone else to dare suggest such a thing.

Ultimately, as Orwell recognised, linguistic games like these are inherently political. And I think the seniors will be on shaky ground if they try to deal with them without political input.

Easy Street - if you look at the RNR website it states:

Q. Do all members of the Royal Naval Reserve serve at sea?

A. No, but much will depend on the job role assigned to you. Many Reservists will work ashore, rather than at sea.

So with ~3,000 RNRs then that is more than a “slack handful”. There are also Regulars that only ever serve ashore or go aboard without a role to operate the ship - does that make them a “sailor” or a passenger? Just because I go on holiday to France on a P&O ferry, and I know how to operate a fire extinguisher, doesn’t make me a sailor either!

PS. A couple of definitions from Google on Soldiers:

a person who is in an army and wearsitsuniform, especially someone who fights when there is a war:

A soldier is the man or woman who fights for their government and carries the weapons, risking their life in the process. The word comes from the Latin solidus, which is the name of the gold coin used to pay soldiers who fought in the Roman army.

LJ, cherry picking search results is desperate stuff, but in any case “...especially someone who fights” doesn’t exclude those who don’t fight. If you really must cite Google then try searching “soldier dictionary”. Guess what comes up in the top result box? “A person who serves in an army”. Anyway, I prefer to go with the Concise Oxford, as close to authoritative as I can get without subscribing to the OED. “Soldier: a person serving in or having served in an army.”

It is quite worrying to see otherwise sensible people scurrying about attempting to redefine such basic terms. It is exactly the sort of anti-intellectualism which Orwell and others pushed back against because of the danger it posed to society (think “2+2=5”).

Meanwhile, anyone in the RN or RNR who serves afloat has to complete shipboard firefighting and damage control training and would be expected to take a full part in such activity. That makes them a bit more than a ferry passenger who knows what a fire extinguisher looks like. You know this.

This we agree on. Not so sure about the rest. The origin of the word Soldier wins the argument for me and being able to react in an emergency on a ship doesn’t make you a sailor surely - otherwise everyone may as well be an aviator then as they know how to blow up a life jacket, open the emergency hatches, operate a fire extinguisher and go down the slides!

The term soldier, of course, by its very definition, refers to the military. The term sailor does not - anyone wHo sails, be it navy, merchant marine, yacht or dinghy is by definition a sailor. Similarly aviator/aviatrix etc do don’t define serving in an Air Force.

Were there any members of the Roman Army who didn’t fight? If so, were they paid with something other than a solidus? If the answer to both of those questions is yes then you might be onto something in an arcane etymological debate, if you came equipped with good historical evidence. But one line plucked from an internet search result does not an argument make. And especially not in the face of straightforward, authoritative dictionary definitions. Two thousand years of linguistic (and military organisational) evolution is a rather different beast to an overnight redefinition.

Honestly, this thread started out by asking what word the RAF could use to match the gender-neutral ‘soldier’ and ‘sailor’, and it now has you arguing not to use those two words either. Despite the fact that they are inclusive words which have long been used to bind together members of the respective services across rank and trade boundaries to help form a cohesive whole - a key strength of a fighting service. This is *precisely* the kind of pernicious spreading effect which many worry about in arguments like this.

I’ve got time to spare.......

Unfortunately, with that suggestion, you would be wrong. "They" really are looking at it.