Frederick Stanley Mockford

Frederick Stanley Mockford (1897 – 1 March 1962) was the originator of the uniform international distress signal "Mayday". He was a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in Waddon in South London. When asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency, he devised the term "Mayday" since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, France. The term is based on the French m'aider, a shortened version of venez m'aider (meaning "come help me").