As a curious foreigner, the culture of fraternity/sorority houses is all very alien to me, but the use of the Greek alphabet seems almost universal.
Is there an origin story for this?
Do the particular letters chosen mean anything?
How does a house pick what “its” title will be, and do they have to claim it so that no other house uses it? Or is it one of these “lost to time” things?
Thanks!
[Chose “other” but i guess it’s sort of sociology!]
In: 506
The first frat was the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary in 1776. They took the letters from their motto: “Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης”, meaning “the love of learning is the guide of life.”
After that, organizations just did it to sound cool like those PBK guys.
So the Greek letters don’t have a particular meaning; it comes from early fraternities using Greek letters to basically seem cooler. Ancient Greece was always a good go-to for seeming intellectual. It’s basically branding.
Fraternities and sororities tend to be national organizations. The sorority Alpha Chi Omega has chapters across the country, as do many others. For example, our chapter met with the chapter of another school when we went there for a football game.
So that leaves two avenues for Greek life to form. Either a few of the students at the university could band together and try to charter a new chapter; they could try to get national support, or go independent and pick their own, new letters.
For the most part, Greek life is self-sustaining. They handle a lot of their own issues and don’t need to constantly reach out to nationals. It’s largely decentralized, with most of the action done at the chapter level.
Greek letters don’t have any specific significance other than looking smart. I would think of it like a franchise, where chapters can be part of the larger, parent organization, but still handling most of their own business.
I was in a fraternity, so feel free to ask more questions.
Back in the day, classical studies, that is, Greek and Latin language and literature, were a much bigger deal at American universities. The academic clubs that eventually evolved into fraternities leaned on that classical curriculum and chose mottos in Greek to name their organization. Originally, the letters were abbreviations for those mottos, and the full motto was kept a secret from non-members. Today, the letters don’t necessarily mean anything but have become part of the aesthetic of college Greek life.
They wanted unique and special names for their groups, so they chose letters from the Greek alphabet. The Greek culture represents wisdom and knowledge, which matches the ideals of these groups.
Each group usually picks 2 or 3 Greek letters for their name. Sometimes these letters stand for Greek words that have a special meaning to the group. When a new group is formed, they make sure their chosen name isn’t already being used at their school.
The Greek alphabet naming tradition has been around for a long time. Different schools might have groups with the same name, but each has its own unique traditions and history.
There are two types of fraternity/sorority: Social and Professional.
Each major profession has a corresponding fraternity [Professional Fraternities are always open to all genders, but professional sororities are usually women only as per USA Title IX]:
– Theta Tau: The Foremost Fraternity for Engineers ENGINEERING LEADERS for Service, Profession, and Brotherhood
– Sigma Phi Delta: Another Engineering fraternity was founded on April 11, 1924 at the University of Southern California [because obviously we need two]
– Alpha Omega Epsilon is a professional and social sorority composed of female engineering and technical science students
– Sigma Alpha Iota is an organization which promotes interaction among those who share a commitment to music
– Psi Chi is the International Honor Society in Psychology
– Delta Chi Xi: Dance
– Kappa Pi: Art
– Phi Psi: Textile arts and manufacturing engineering
– Zeta Phi Eta: Communication arts and sciences
Greek Letters are used because in Western Europe and UK colonies, only “Educated” people read Greek. Greek is still taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and seminaries so that scholars can read old texts and translations of the Bible. By using Greek letters, the fraternities and sororities are being pretentious.
In the USA, most fraternities and sororities have a “national charter” and “campus chapters”. Students pay fees to be members (another way of being exclusive and pretentious), and some of the fees are sent to the national charter which uses the money to support itself and possibly start new chapters at universities that don’ t yet have a chapter of that fraternity or sorority.
When a new fraternity or sorority is founded, that is the “Alpha Chapter”. For odd historical reasons, a university near me has a dozen Alpha Chapters…
[Social fraternities and sororities are for socializing.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_fraternities_and_sororities)
Social fraternities and sororities are intended to create a social hierarchy, preserve historical privilege, and provide “networking”. It isn’t what you know that matters. It is who you know. One of my worst Engineering students barely graduated and immediately started his career as Vice President of Engineering for a medium sized tech company. He was drinking buddies (fraternity brothers) with the company President’s son.
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[Edit]: When I was a student, I lived next door to TAU KAPPA EPSILON fraternity. They hosted epic parties worthy of “Animal House”. The university eventually banned TKE from campus because too many students drank themselves to death during rush events, and many other unsavory things may have happened…
Because American fraternity folk admire the man-on-man friendship to which the early Greeks adhered.
All this talk and not a single mention of how all the frats etc. are knock-offs of freemasonry, intended to prep the students for membership in that cult?
Others are right about the greek letters being part of mottoes etc. but it also goes deeper than that, as with many secret societies etc. (since most are gnostic to some degree, and they draw on freemasonry in large part.) there’s idolizing of the old greek culture, particularly pythagoras and his elitist group, so the greek letter stuff is also a tribute to that as well.
Way back in the day when fraternities started (like the late 1800’s) the classics were a big deal in higher education in America. EVERYONE who attended a university would be educated on Greek and Latin. It’s important to note that Latin really wasn’t all that special or unique to higher education, because Catholics were and are absolutely everywhere in the USA. So when these groups formed, they picked something unique about themselves as an identifier. They chose Greek. In America, at the time, the only people who would know Greek were people who had attended universities. Newer fraternities (like those founded post WWII) just followed the established trend.
Especially with older fraternities the letters chosen typically had some personal significance to the founding members. For example, my fraternity uses the first letters of the names of the first three campuses the fraternity established chapters at.
Also important to note, each fraternity is typically a national organization (or international, hey Canadians!). The ATO at SUNY Albany is affiliated with the ATO at UC Berkeley. It’s the same organization. Just different chapters. So it’s not like each fraternity at each university is an isolated entity. These days, “nationals”, which is to say, the national office of a given fraternity will approach a university about starting a chapter there. They will buy property in the town, build a house, and begin recruiting. The idea is that eventually the chapter will be self sustaining, members doing all the work to maintain the fraternity. But if things go wrong, nationals will step in and attempt to steer the chapter back onto the right path.
At this point in time, most established fraternities names are trademarked by the national organization. If you tried to use the name “ATO” without actually being affiliated with the ATO organization, you would get sued.
It’s very different than what it used to be. They used to be very informal organizations. But they became more organized and codified as time went on. They got to their “current” state in the 1960-1970’s, and honestly haven’t changed a ton since then.
I can only speak for my own organization but our letters were not random and they did stand for something, however, what they stood for was a “secret” and you would only be told when you initiated as a full member.
Since no one else seems to have answered this part of your question yes, they do have to “claim” their letters. The letters are trademarked so you can’t start a new chapter of, say, Phi Mu without approval from the existing national organization anymore than you could start a new burger restaurant and name it McDonald’s. Greek organizations VIGOROUSLY defend their trademarks and would sue any group trying to use their letters. So if two schools each have a chapter of Kappa Alpha, they are affiliated with each other as individual chapters of a national organization. Sometimes a chapter will decide or be forced to leave their national organization and when they do, they will usually change or at least modify the name by adding or dropping a letter.
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