Why did they call a supersonic transportation system the Concorde?

Question

Why did they call a supersonic transportation system the Concorde?

Answer 1

The name was chosen by the coalition of designers and manufacturers that developed the airplane.  The word means "agreement" in French.

Answer 2

There was some small resentment that the English version of the word, simply ommitting the 'e' at the end was not used.  No big deal really.

It was still the only SST that approached sucess, culturally and in opinion, if never financially.

The Russians had the TU-144 (Concordski to many westerners) which had a short operational life following a disatsrous accident in Paris at an airshow in 1073m (or'74?), mainly as a mail carrier.  There is some belief that development of this aircraft was preceeded by Soviet espionage whereby early Concorde plans were stolen.  Tu-144's had a canard behind the cockpit to acheive adequate handling characteristics

Oddly enough, it both preceeded the Concorde into operation by a few weeks, and superceeded it, with an example still used by NASA a while after the Concorde was permanently withdrawn.

Oh, and the Lockheed C5A Galaxy was ncknamed 'FRED' for Fantastic Ridiculous Economic Disaster' during it's development

Answer 3

can't recall but the russians also had a supersonic and they were teased by people calling it a concordsky

Answer 4

Because calling it Fred would have been silly.

Answer 5

It became obvious at a Paris airshow in the mid 1950s that both English and French companies had very similar supersonic aircraft in pre-production.  An agreement, or concord* was drawn up between the two nations to jointly develop the aircraft with a 50/50 stake in all costs.  The agreement had a clause that stated if either party decided to cancel the program at any time, that party would be responsible for the cost of the entire program up to that time.

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It was obvious early on that the plane would not sell but neither party wanted to pull out of the agreement because a huge amount of money had already been spent.  

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To the dismay of the English the French started spelling the name as Concorde, the french way.  The English graciously went along with the French spelling.

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Answer 6

French and British concordance.