With their usual verbal facility, ingenious Somali sophists developed an alternative circumlocution, substituting dates, starting from that of the Glorious Revolution, to represent the major power-holding groups. In this idiom 21 October was used as a synonym for M, 22 October for O and 23 October for D. This new code had the additional advantage of being sufficiently elastic to embrace a wider range of groups and, if necessary, to register changes in their relative power and ranking.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 544