From an interesting article that passed through my inbox.  You are probably familiar with the term “Roger that.” It was a staple of truckers on their CB radios, kids playing back and forth with walkie-talkies, or even face to face. The expression means acknowledgement and confirmation. But do you know its origin?Before the 1957 adoption of “Romeo” for “R” in the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.), among the US Military the phonetic word was “Roger.”

“Roger” comes from the phonetic alphabet used by military and aviation personnel during WWII, when the use of two-way radios became a main form of communication and operators need crystal clear ways to spell things out with no room for misinterpretation. You may be familiar with the current NATO version of the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.), where the the word for “R” is Romeo, but before that standard was adopted in 1957, the words were a bit different, and the word for “R” was “Roger.”

But the use of “Roger” as a confirmation has roots that go back even further. In the Morse code days, when sending long messages could be tedious, a useful shorthand was to respond with single, meaningful letters. Responding to a message with the letter “R,” for example, simply let the sender know their message had been received. When two-way radio came along, the shorthand continued, but with the word “Roger” instead of “R” itself.

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Article credit: Where ‘Roger That’ Really Comes From; Popular Mechanics, Jan 20 2021