16-05-2025
QuickCheck: Is the term 'mayday' related to the month of May?
PETALING JAYA: There are several celebrations held in May: Labour Day, Mother's Day, and Wesak Day are among them.
But what about mayday? Does the term hold any relation to the fifth month of the year?
Verdict:
False
While you need 'may' to spell 'mayday', it does not relate to the month.
In the past, the SOS was most commonly used in telegraphic communications. The Morse code for SOS is represented by three dots, three dashes and another three dots (...---...). This was easy to remember and decipher and was used predominantly by ships in distress.
On the other hand, aircraft use radio and not telegraph as their primary means of communication. And when in distress, a pilot wouldn't have time to clarify to anyone listening that they meant S as in "Sam" and not F as in "Frank." A short, easily understood word that couldn't be mistaken for something else was necessary.
In 1923, there was a lot of air traffic between England and France, and there were enough international problems over the English Channel that both parties wanted to find a good distress signal, other than SOS, that everyone would understand.
It was then that a senior radio officer, Frederick Mockford of the Croydon Airport in London, came up with the idea for 'mayday" because it sounded like the French word "m'aider", which means 'help me."
The call spread well beyond the Channel; the new distress signal's use was reported as far away as Singapore.
The term mayday became an international distress call, and in 1927, the United States formally adopted it as an official radiotelegraph distress signal.
And the rest is history.
Anyway, if you're not in any distress or emergency, you can find out a bit more about SOS here: news/true-or-not/2022/09/28/ quickcheck-is-it-true-that- sos-means-save-our-souls
References:
com/wordplay/mayday-meaning- origin
wonder/what-does-mayday-mean
