[2] The Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca reportedly used coded references for his agents and informants in Rome and among allied territories.
[3] Some sources suggest that key figures in his intelligence operations were identified using nicknames instead of real names to avoid detection by Roman counterintelligence.
[4] He also referred to Marc Antony and other generals with shortened or altered names in correspondence to prevent interception from revealing strategic plans.
[5][6] The Dead Sea Scrolls reference figures such as the “Teacher of Righteousness” and the “Wicked Priest,” which may have functioned as code names to obscure real identities.
[7] Procopius suggests that spies within the Persian and Gothic courts were assigned allegorical names to protect them from discovery.
In the British case names were administered and controlled by the Inter Services Security Board (ISSB) staffed by the War Office.
Random lists of names were issued to users in alphabetical blocks of ten words and were selected as required.
Ewen Montagu, a British Naval intelligence officer, discloses in Beyond Top Secret Ultra that during World War II, Nazi Germany habitually used ad hoc code names as nicknames which often openly revealed or strongly hinted at their content or function.
Britain and the United States developed the security policy of assigning code names intended to give no such clues to the uninitiated.
The code name for the American A-12 / SR-71 spy plane project, producing the fastest, highest-flying aircraft in the world, was Oxcart.
Although the word could stand for a menace to shipping (in this case, that of Japan), the American code name for the attack on the subtropical island of Okinawa in World War II was Operation Iceberg.
The policy of recognition reporting names was continued into the Cold War for Soviet, other Warsaw Pact, and Communist Chinese aircraft.
[citation needed] However, some names were appropriate, such as "Condor" for the Antonov An-124, or, most famously, "Fulcrum" for the Mikoyan MiG-29, which had a "pivotal" role in Soviet air-strategy.
The intelligence units would then assign it a code name consisting of the official abbreviation of the base, then a letter, for example, "Ram-A", signifying an aircraft sighted at Ramenskoye Airport.
Throughout the Second World War, the British allocation practice favored one-word code names (Jubilee, Frankton).
That of the Americans favored longer compound words, although the name Overlord was personally chosen by Winston Churchill himself.