The Sutlers Supreme

Why Was NAAFI Often Called “NAFFY”?

Language, place, and a South London newspaper, 1925

A reader recently asked a deceptively simple question: why do newspapers and memoirs so often refer to NAAFI as “NAFFY”? It is a spelling that appears frequently in press cuttings, particularly from the inter-war and wartime years, yet rarely explained. To modern eyes, it can even look faintly dismissive.

As it turns out, the answer lies not in insult or irony, but in language, locality, and everyday use.

A clue from South London, 1925

While reviewing inter-war newspaper material, I came across a striking article published on 24 July 1925 in the Southwark and Bermondsey Record. Titled:

“NAFFY.” — Being the Romance of a War Baby
By “White Ensign”

The piece does something remarkably helpful: it explicitly explains the word “NAFFY”.

The author first reflects on how nicknames come into being, describing them as “short, colloquial expressions of good-fellowship and goodwill.” He then turns directly to the subject:

“‘Naffy’ is the nickname for an organisation with whose activities the general public is not intimately acquainted… It is the popular pronunciation of the initial letters of the Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes.”

In other words, “NAFFY” is not slang applied later, nor a journalistic invention. It is simply the spoken form of N-A-A-F-I, written down as it was heard.

Southwark and Bermondsey Record, 24 July 1925. An early and explicit explanation of “NAFFY” as the spoken, affectionate pronunciation of N-A-A-F-I.

Affection, not criticism

This matters, because it clears up a common modern misunderstanding. The article makes it clear that “NAFFY” was not intended to belittle the organisation. On the contrary, it is framed as a familiar, almost affectionate nickname — one that had already become widespread enough by the mid-1920s to need no apology.

Importantly, this usage predates the later civilian slang sense of “naff” as something tacky or inferior. Any negative associations are retrospective, not contemporary.

Kennington and the sound of everyday speech

The same article offers another, more subtle clue. It describes a visit to:

“the Headquarters of the Institutes at Imperial Court, Upper Kennington Lane, London, and the immense factory and warehouses almost immediately adjoining…”

By late 1922, NAAFI had moved its headquarters from Basil Street in Knightsbridge to Kennington, a working-class area of South London, where offices, warehouses, and distribution facilities sat side by side. NAAFI rapidly became one of the area’s major employers.

It is not hard to imagine how, in this environment, an acronym used dozens of times a day by clerks, warehouse staff, drivers, and suppliers would quickly settle into a spoken form.

In South London speech, N-A-A-F-I naturally becomes “NAFFY” — a word you can call across a yard, put on a loading note, or drop into conversation without ceremony.

A small word with a big story

This 1925 cutting goes a long way towards answering the reader’s question — while also opening up a wider story about language and everyday use. It reminds us that NAAFI was not just an institution imposed from above, but one absorbed into everyday life, named and renamed by the people who worked with it and depended upon it.

“NAFFY” is not a mistake.
It is the sound of familiarity.

Source note

Southwark and Bermondsey Record, 24 July 1925, “NAFFY. — Being the Romance of a War Baby”, by “White Ensign”. Contemporary press commentary on the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, including an explicit explanation of the nickname “NAFFY”.

Accessed via Findmypast (British Library Newspapers).
Reproduced under fair dealing for non-commercial historical research and commentary.

Harry Miller, Service to the Services: The Story of NAAFI (1971).