Quebec — NATO Phonetic Alphabet for Q
Q = Quebec
Say Quebec the way most English speakers naturally would, and you'll get the stress wrong: ICAO's documentation puts it on the second syllable, "ke-BECK," the same kind of non-English stress note Hotel and Juliett carry in their own official guidance. The word itself, ICAO's choice for the letter Q, is named after the Canadian province and city.
As an international maritime signal flag, Quebec carries genuine historical weight beyond the phonetic alphabet: known traditionally as the "yellow jack," it signals that a vessel's crew is healthy and that the ship is requesting free pratique — permission to enter port without quarantine — a maritime custom that predates the modern phonetic alphabet by centuries.
As a place name with a strong French-language heritage, Quebec also fits the alphabet's broader multilingual mandate well — French speakers can recognize something close to its correct pronunciation on sight, which mattered given that French was one of the language groups ICAO's testing process specifically needed the alphabet to work for.