Tank - Etymology

Etymology

The word tank was first applied to the British "landships" in 1915, before they entered service, to keep their nature secret. Several explanations of the precise origin of the term have been suggested, including:

1. It arose in British factories making the hulls of the first battle tanks: workmen and possible spies were to be given the impression they were constructing mobile water tanks for the British Army, thus keeping the production of a fighting vehicle secret.
2. The term was first used in a secret report on the new motorised weapon presented to Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, by British Army Lt.-Col. Ernest Swinton.
3. Winston Churchill's biography states, "To disguise the device, drawings were marked 'water carriers for Russia.' When it was pointed out this might be shortened to "WCs for Russia," the drawings were relabelled "water tanks for Russia." Eventually the weapon was just called a tank. (In fact, the prototype was referred to as a water-carrier for Mesopotamia . The Russian connection is that some of the first production Tanks were labelled in Russian "With Care to Petrograd," as a further security measure.)

In his autobiography, Albert Stern (founder member of the Landships Committee, later head of the Mechanical Warfare Supply Department) says that on or shortly after October 20, 1915, "Mr. Macnamara then suggested, for secrecy's sake, to change the title of the Landships Committee. Mr. d'Eyncourt agreed that it was very desirable to retain secrecy by all means, and proposed to refer to the vessel as a "Water Carrier." In Government offices, committees and departments are always known by their initials. For this reason I, as Secretary, considered the proposed title totally unsuitable.* In our search for a synonymous term, we changed the word "Water Carrier" to "Tank," and became the "Tank Supply" or "T.S." Committee. That is how these weapons came to be called "Tanks," and the name has now been adopted by all countries in the world." Swinton states, "Since the 24th December, 1915, the Tank has always been known as such; and there has been no confusion as to its nomenclature." His Notes on the Employment of Tanks, in which he uses the word throughout, was published in January 1916.

(* The initials W.C. are a British abbreviation for a water closet; in other words, a toilet. Unfortunately, later in the War a number of Mk IV Tanks were fitted with grapnels to remove barbed wire. They were designated "Wire Cutters" and had the large letters "W.C." painted on their rear armour.)

Stern says, "we changed the word." Lt.-Col. Swinton also claims that it was his suggestion at that meeting. However, in July 1918 the following explanation was published in Popular Science Monthly: "Because a fellow of the Royal Historical Society has unintentionally misled the British public as to the origin of the famous "tanks," Sir William Tritton, who designed and built them, has published the real story of their name ... Since it was obviously inadvisable to herald "Little Willie's" reason for existence to the world he was known as the "Instructional Demonstration Unit." "Little Willie's" hull was called in the shop orders a "water carrier for Mesopotamia;" no one knew that the hull was intended to be mounted on a truck. Naturally, the water carrier began to be called a "tank." So the name came to be used by managers and foremen of the shop, until now it has a place in the army vocabulary and will probably be so known in history for all time." It may be that d'Eyncourt was aware of this practice and therefore suggested the name to the Landships Committee. In any event, the word was in use by members of the Committee several months before production orders had been placed.

By "all countries in the world," Stern is not entirely correct. The word "tank" was adopted in most languages, including Russian. Some countries, however, use different names. In France, in 1917 the second nation to employ tanks, the use of an English term was rejected and they are known as chars d'assaut ("assault vehicles") or simply chars. In Germany, tanks are usually referred to as "Panzer" (lit. "armour"), a shortened form of the full term "Panzerkampfwagen", literally "armoured fighting vehicle". In the Arab world, tanks are called Dabbāba (after a type of siege engine). In Italian, a tank is a "carro armato" (lit. "armed wagon"), without reference to its armour. The Scandinavian countries use the term stridsvogn (Norway) or stridsvagn (Sweden) ("chariot", lit. "battle wagon"). Polish name czołg is derived from verb czołgać się meaning "to crawl" depicting the way of machine's movement and its speed.