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I can't find anything to back it up but I think the inventor actually gave it the name to market it under. Enigma was orginally intended for commercial purposes - company security etc.

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Not trying to hog the action, simply sticking to stuff I'm interested in & know a little about.
I once knew the answer to this but it was long ago & I forget all about it now. I assume it's something to do with the Samurai warrior tradition. I seem to remember the name "Kamikaze" was also used for a pre-WWII Japanese record breaking aircraft. Maybe someone can elaborate.

Ashamed to say I had to resort to Google.
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The record breaking aircraft I was thinking of was the Mitsubishi Ki-15. I believe the techniques used on the record breaking flight were adopted with great success by the Japanese military.
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I realise that OTTOL. I'm also ribbing you in my own way & learn something new here every single day.

I'm just a raw amateur compared with some of our members. The historical knowledge of some youngsters around here not only surprises but also impresses me. This is almost certainly due to their own interest & a passion for knowledge. Unfortunately I don't think they're taught this in school.

Americans used some of the indian tribes to make up a code system for radio conversation of frontline troops in the pacific.

The signal name for the startof the atack on pearl harbour was 'east wind, rain'

'east wind' as they came flying from the east
'rain' quite obvious: bombing.

The americans had a name for the japanese coding machines... something with purple in it. they are not shown to the public as they never managed to break the coded messages of the thing until they got hold of one

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I believe the recent feature film "Windtalkers" is based on the Navajo code talkers. I haven't seen it myself. http://www.mgm.com/windtalkers/
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This thread seems to have gone quiet so I thought I would try to revive it. On reading further into "Most Secret War" I've found a few more interesting examples.

In late 1940 the Enigma code had been broken sufficiently for some of the Luftwaffe bombing targets to be identified in advance. The heavy night raid on Coventry on 14th November 1940 flattened much of the city & was the most devastating bombing raid Britain had experienced up till that point. Unfortunately the codebreakers could not decode the messages in time on this particular day, not that this would have changed anything. Previous decoded messages for a major operation by KG 100 named "Moonlight Sonata" often included the word KORN which translates to corn in English. This could have meant anything but it was later discovered that KORN was the name given to Coventry - or Koventry as it would be spelled in German.

After Coventry the Germans mounted a similar large attack under the code-name "Regeschirm" - meaning Umbrella. Neville Chamberlain was famous for carrying an umbrella & also associated with Birmingham. This turned out to be the target.

Another operation was named "Einheitspreis" which translates to "unit price". This was associated with stores like Woolworths where at the time most items or units cost sixpence. Sixpence is historically associated with the Town Comissioners at Wolverhampton*. This attack never took place & it was later discovered that it was the first operation to be directly cancelled as a result of the Bletchley Park codebreakers work. The Luftwaffe reconnaisance had noticed a big build up of AA guns & other defences around the proposed target which led them to believe the code had been completely broken. This was not in fact true as the target had been identified purely through nothing more than inspired guesswork.

I still find it strange that clues were given in these & other code names to enable someone with the appropriate knowledge to make a good guess as to their significance. It would surely have been better if the code names were chosen at random with no possible significance at all. I find it fascinating how intellectual minds work.

*PS. I was completely unaware of the connection between Wolverhampton & sixpence until a few minutes ago.
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By the way, it seems our new little Forum catagory is goin quite nicely. Thank you people. It';s very enjoyable to have somewhere to come and always find something very interesting to get involved in.   8)

Hagar wrote:
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I always thought that Churchill knew about this raid ahead of time, because they had figured out the German 'radio beam' bomber navigation system. But he was faced with the dilemma of evacuating Coventry or defending it very heavily with AAA and night Fighters etc, and risk letting the Germans know their 'beams' had been discovered.  ???

Have I got my 'beams' crossed somehow, or is there something to this?  ???

By the way, Hagar, as far as Bletchley Park is concerned, if I ever get to the UK, it will be on my list of 'must sees'.
I've seen so many History Channel Docs on this place and the people that worked ther, that I feel I know the place inside out!! 
It seems that whenever there is a Doco on some event in WWII, Bletchley is somehow involved.

I recall seeing a movie a while ago about Bletchley. Maybe someone else has seen it too?
It's about a bloke and a woman that work there, one of them turns out to be a Spy. It includes the 'episode' during the Atlantic War when the Germans had changed the Enigma code and they needed to get the Germans to send a pile of messages to their U-Boats so they could fill in some missing peices to the new code. They risked the safety of an entire convoy, hoping that the U-Boats would converge on it and they could get the missing bits they needed.
Has anyone seen this one?? 

Here's one that is the opposite of the meaningful code names - meaningless code names.

The D-Day landing beaches names - Utah and Omaha - had no particular significance.  Neither did Mulberry - the artficial harbors.  Imagine the general staff's shock when these words appeared in crossword puzzles in the London Daily Telegraph a month before the landings.

If you have heard the story you have heard that it was chalked up to coincidence and the landings went off as planned.

Not so.  The words were overheard by a schoolboy who, fortunately, had no clue of their significance, and passed on to his schoolmaster, who published the crossword puzzles.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0206/feature1/