Well, during the Cold War, NATO often named the discovered Soviet weapons according to its own habit of naming weapons.
The first letter in the naming indicates the purpose of the equipment. For example, fighters use the letter "F", bombers use the letter "B", helicopters use the letter "H", anti-tank missiles use the letter "S" and surface-to-air missiles use the letter "G". For aircraft naming, monosyllabic names are used for aircraft with piston engines and disyllabic names are used for aircraft with jet engines.
At that time, due to the hostility between the two sides, we naturally didn't choose any good names.
For example, the name of MIG-19 was farmer, the name of farmer
MIG-21 was fishbed, and the name of Fish Nest
began to be relatively neutral in the late 197s. For example, Su-27 was flanker, and Su-35 was Super. I couldn't remember the nickname, but later I thought it was good, especially when I sold it, so I accepted
Su-35 was called super flanker by themselves.
As for China weapons, NATO followed the same principle, but some China's imitation Soviet weapons still used the nickname of Soviet weapons, such as the code names of 歼 6 and 歼 7 are still farmers and fish nests
, but some China developed them by themselves, and used the above principles to name them
such as Qiang. It's a poker scam, and the dealer's tactics are flexible, which means that Qiang 5 has good maneuverability.
The code name of p>J8II is fin whale, because the code name of American F2 is tiger shark, and tiger shark is the nemesis of fin whale.
Later, China learned a lesson, and new weapons themselves announced nicknames
For example, J1 is Raptor and FC1 is Xiaolong.