อนุทิน 174491

May Day and Mayday but SOS

The May Day that refers to the first of May has been in English for a very long time—back to the 1200s, in fact—but it’s not what inspired the call for help.

Mayday comes from french m’aider or m’aidez, shortened from venez m’aider ‘come and help me’.

Mayday is internationally accepted as distress signal in voice form (for its clear and short sound) .
SOS (save our souls, save our ship,…?) is another distress signal used [originally] for Morse code (dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot ; …—… ) and in [large] graphic form (clear and short glyph).