"WHO is who it is"

Language Log 2025-02-01

Recent events invite a reprise of the famous Abbot and Costello skit — and Josh Johnson has obliged:

The skit wouldn't work for the Organisation mondiale de la Santé in French, or the Organización Mundial de la Salud in Spanish, since OMS is not a word in either language. The Russian abbreviation (ВОЗ) doesn't lend itself to jokes either, as far as I can tell — readers may be able to tell us about options for Chinese and Arabic.

German, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, etc. are not among the languages that WHO offers:

Presumably WHO follows the United Nations in this: