The alt.usage.english FAQ   

• "ISO" by Mark Brader

  (Word Origins)
  
  

  
     ISO is the International Organization for Standardization, not
  the International Standards Organization.  Some people think the
  organization's initials in French are ISO, but actually they would
  be OIN (for "Organisation internationale de normalisation").
  According to someone I met who worked there, the abbreviation ISO
  was adopted because they didn't want to use the actual English
  initials, but could permute them into the Greek-derived prefix iso-
  meaning "same" (which is what standards are for making things the
  :-) ).  In other words, it's wordplay.  For the official account,
  see http://www.iso.ch/
  
  Coordinated Universal Time is UTC because the C is of secondary
  importance and can be written as a subscript.  This one, too, is
  mistaken for coming from French, but does not.

  
  
  Source: [Mark Israel, 'Word Origins: "ISO" by Mark Brader', The alt.usage.english FAQ file,(line 3667), (29 Sept 1997)]
  
  
  
  

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