Acronyms: No More Please

OK, we give up. We no longer know what people are talking about. The use of acronyms has reached epidemic proportions. The TLA (three letter acronym) has seemingly run out of options and when one of the letters is "f" then there is little scope for variation.

"F" stands for financial, fraud, food, farm
"S" stands for securities, serious, services, suspicious, special
"A" stands for agency, authority, Act
"O" stands for office, ordinance

And more......

Japan has an FSA but it is not the same as the UK's FSA. Oh, and German has one, too. In fact, the UK has three FSAs - The Financial Services Act, The Financial Services Agency and the Food Standards Agency. It also has the Financial Services and Markets Act but as FSMA it does not quite qualify). The USA has the Farm Service Agency and The Farm Security Administration and the Fabless Semiconductor Association. There is the English Football Supporter's Association and the USA has Financial Security Assurance, Inc.

In Swiss-French, FSA is short for Suise Federation de aveugles (the association for the blind) and also in Switzerland, it is the Swiss Athletics Association; in Sweden, FSA is Förbundet Sveriges Arbetsterapeuter, the Swedish Association of Occupational Therapists.

In Germany, the FSA is Forschungsgesellschaft für angewandte which is something to do with explosions and microbiology.

In Brazil, FSA is a university. In Spain FSA develops solar panels. For dangerous sports nuts, FSA stands for Federation of Sports at Altitude.

Back to France where Laval university has a la Faculté des sciences de l'administration.

Iceland, too, has an FSA: but we don't understand Icelandic so if you want to know what it does, please find out and tell us! Others include Food Science Alerts, Fondazione Salute Animales, Family Services, Australia and the Federation of Sports Arenas.

The world famous (or infamous, depending on your view) SFO is the UK's Serious Fraud Office - every enforcement officer in international investigations knows that - as well as San Francisco International Airport to say nothing of the French Consulate in SanFran.

And now FSO is the Financial Services Ordinance in Hong Kong as well as the Finlands Svenska Orienteringsförbund (Finland / Sweden Orienteering Association). It was also an Eastern European manufacturer of cars built with technical assistance from Fiat and later to become known as Polski-Fiat. In Hong Kong, it is the film services office (a regulatory body) and elswhere the Friends of the Sea Otter.

SAR is suspicious transaction report or Special Administration Region (Hong Kong). Or the Sons of the American Revolution, El Volunteers for Israel and a host of things about search and rescue. Or, as was discovered just weeks after this article was written, an unpleasant virus.

The SFA is the UK's Securities and Futures Association. But in the USA it is "federal student aid" and (for the sake of balance) the Scottish Football Association. In Ireland, it is the Small Firms Association and in Korea it is the Society for Fine Arts (we think - they seem to publish information only in Korean which, for a European, is even more difficult to understand than Icelandic). In Belgium, SFA is the Sabena Flight Academy, in Swiitzerland, it is the Swiss Funds Association and in the USA, the Snack Foods Association.

MAS is Malaysian Airlines System or The Monetary Authority of Singapore. In New York, it is the Municipal Arts Society and in England, the Manchester Astronomical Society.

H E L P !