Tank Drawing

Stern says, "we changed the word." Lt.-Col. Swinton also claims that it was his suggestion at that meeting. However, in July 1918 the following explanation was published in Popular Science Monthly: "Because a fellow of the Royal Historical Society has unintentionally misled the British public as to the origin of the famous "tanks," Sir William Tritton, who designed and built them, has published the real story of their name ... Since it was obviously inadvisable to herald "Little Willie's" reason for existence to the world he was known as the "Instructional Demonstration Unit." "Little Willie's" hull was called in the shop orders a "water carrier for Mesopotamia;" no one knew that the hull was intended to be mounted on a truck. Naturally, the water carrier began to be called a "tank." So the name came to be used by managers and foremen of the shop, until now it has a place in the army vocabulary and will probably be so known in history for all time." It may be that d'Eyncourt was aware of this practice and therefore suggested the name to the Landships Committee. In any event, the word was in use by members of the Committee several months before production orders had been placed.
By "all countries in the world," Stern is not entirely correct. The word "tank" was adopted in most languages, including Russian. Some countries, however, use different names. In France, in 1917 the second nation to employ tanks, the use of an English term was rejected and they are known as chars d'assaut ("assault vehicles") or simply chars. In Germany, tanks are usually referred to as "Panzer" (lit. "armour"), a shortened form of the full term "Panzerkampfwagen", literally "armoured fighting vehicle". In the Arab world, tanks are called Dabbāba (after a type of siege engine). In Italian, a tank is a "carro armato" (lit. "armed wagon"), without reference to its armour. The Scandinavian countries use the term stridsvogn (Norway) or stridsvagn (Sweden) ("chariot", lit. "battle wagon").