phonetic alphabet

I've been on the phone a lot recently making final arrangements for our Eastern Europe trip.

As a result, I've found that when I have to read a sequence of letters and numbers to a customer service representative, I'm wildly inconsistent when choosing names to clarify letters. For example, I've recently defined "P" as "P as in Paul", "P as in Peter", and "P as in Patrick". I'm not sure what makes me think of one name over another.

I was especially amused after I told one rep, "C as in Charles, W as in Walter, R as in Richard, B as in Benjamin" and just a few seconds later, she read back "C as in Cathy, W as in Washington, R as in Roger, B as in Brian".

After that, I went looking online to see what the "standard" names are, and found this site which lists the standard NATO and Western Union tables.