It’s always tricky trying to spell a word over the telephone because several letters are difficult to distinguish from each other, e.g. p and b, m and n, etc. Of course you can use the international alphabet system: alpha, bravo, charlie … but I personally can never remember it. In Italy we use a system that is based on the names of Italian towns. Here it goes:

 

A = Ancona         

B = Bologna

C = Como

D = Domodossola

E = Empoli

F = Firenze

G = Genova

H = hotel

I = Imola

L = Livorno

M= Milano

N = Napoli

O = Orvieto

P = Pisa

Q = quadro

R = Roma

S = Siena

T = Torino

U = Udine

V = Venezia

Z = zeta (or Zara)

 

As you can see there are no Italian towns starting with “h” (this letter is called “acca”), or “q” (“quadro” isn’t the name of a town, it means “picture”). Another peculiarity of the Italian alphabet is that officially we don’t use the letters j, k, w, x, y, but we have a name for each of them:

J = i lunga; k = kappa; w = v doppio; x = ics; y = ipsilon.

 

So, if I’m booking a hotel over the telephone and they ask me “come si scrive il suo nome?” (Lit. how do you write your name?), I would say: S come (= as in) Siena, E come Empoli, R come Roma, E come Empoli, N come Napoli, A come Ancona.

 

N.B. This list of towns is not totally strict and there are some variations such as S = Savona or Salerno, and O = Otranto, but they are all fairly famous Italian towns with the exception of Domodossola. All Italians know this name because of the telephone alphabet, but very few of us know where it is! It’s a small town in the North of Italy on the border with Switzerland.

 

Buona fortuna!