When a pilot shouts “Mayday,” they’re not announcing springtime trouble. The word actually comes from the French phrase “m’aidez”, which means “help me.” And it has nothing to do with May 1st festivals or flower crowns.

Back in the 1920s, air traffic was picking up between England and France, and a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport, Frederick Stanley Mockford, was asked to come up with a spoken distress signal that both English and French pilots could understand. His clever solution? “Mayday”—a word that sounded like a cry for help in French but was easy to say and hear over noisy radios.

By 1927, it became the official international distress call for pilots—and eventually sailors, too. It’s repeated three times (Mayday, Mayday, Mayday) to make sure it’s not mistaken for something else.