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The recent government decision to refer to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant by the name “Daesh” isn’t the first time Ottawa has tried to change the way they refer to the terrorist group.

A Conservative government edict last year to dump ISIL in favour of ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, foundered in part over the inability to translate ISIS into an acceptable French acronym.

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But according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, the April 2015 change sowed confusion at Department of National Defence headquarters. Some military officers refused – at least temporarily – to accept the terminology because of a lack of more specific direction from government. Months later, ISIL was back in use during official DND press briefings about the war in Iraq and Syria.

The debate over what to call Islamic extremists who have overrun large portions of Iraq and Syria has been raging since the group, calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, emerged in force in 2014.