AO explained

AO, aO, Ao, or ao may refer to:

Places

• Ao, Estonia, village in Väike-Maarja Parish, Lääne-Viru County, Estonia
• Ao Line, commuter railway line in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan
• Ao River (Fujian), in China
• Ao Station, railway station in the city of Ono, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan
• Aodu, capital of Shang dynasty, near Zhengzhou
• Aoshima, Ehime, island in Japan
• Aoshima, Miyazaki, island in Japan
• Angola (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code AO)

Arts and entertainment

• Adults Only, an entertainment rating
• AO Music (AOmusic), a world-music fusion group consisting of Jay Oliver, Miriam Stockley and others
• , a 2010 prehistoric drama movie
• , Japanese mecha anime television series
• Lord Ao, a fictional deity in the Dungeons & Dragons universe
• Annoying Orange, an American comedy web series

Businesses and organizations

• AO (originally American Optical Company) eyeglass lenses, a brand now merged with Carl Zeiss Vision
• AO Foundation (originally German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteosynthesefragen), a non-profit organisation dedicated to the treatment of trauma and disorders of the musculoskeletal system
• AO Racing, an American sports car racing team
• AO World, a UK retailer of household appliances trading under the brand name ao.com
• Russian: Aktsionernoye Obschestvo or Russian: Aktsionernoye Obshchestvo (Russian: акционерное общество), a type of Russian corporate entity; see open joint-stock company
• Athletics Ontario, formally Ontario Track and Field Association (OTAF)
• Australian Airlines (IATA code AO)

Government and politics

• Administrative Office of the United States Courts
• Administrative Officer (United Kingdom), a grade within the United Kingdom's Civil Service
• Administrative Officer (Hong Kong), a grade within the Hong Kong's Civil Service
• Autonomous oblast, type of Russian administrative division
• Autonomous okrug, type of Russian administrative division
• NSDAP/AO, Foreign Organization branch of the Nazi Party
• Officer of the Order of Australia, postnominal AO

Military

• Area of operations, a U.S. military term
• A US Navy hull classification symbol: Fleet oiler (AO)
• AO-, the prefix for several firearms
• Aviation Ordnanceman, a United States Navy occupational rating

Philosophy and religion

• Alpha and Omega (abbreviation)
• Ao (Māori mythology), a deity in Māori mythology
• Ao (turtle), a creature in Chinese mythology
• Ao, a type of Easter Island wood carving

Science and technology

• .ao, top-level Internet domain code for Angola
• Adaptive optics, an astronomical imaging technology
• Ambient occlusion, a shading method in computer graphics
• AMSAT-OSCAR, a satellite naming convention
• Applied Optics, scientific journal published by the Optical Society of America (OSA)
• Arctic oscillation, a climate pattern
• Atomic orbital, in physics and chemistry
• Ao, the atomic symbol for the misidentified chemical element Ausenium.
• Acridine orange, a fluorescent dye
• Authorship obfuscation, a privacy technique

Surnames and initials

• Ao (surname) (Chinese: 敖), a Chinese surname
• Ou (surname) (Chinese: 区/Chinese: 區 and Chinese: 欧/Chinese: 歐), romanized as Ao in Cantonese
• Ao Omae (大前 粟生, Ōmae Ao, born 1992), Japanese fiction writer
• Aaron Owens (born 1976), American streetball player

Other uses

• Alphabetically ordered
• Ao (color)
• Ao (digraph)
• Ao languages
• Ao Naga, an Indian ethnic group
• German: ao or German: außerordentlicher, meaning extraordinary professor (academic rank in Germany)
• Australian Open, an annual tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia
• A, an abbreviation of "Anno", meaning "In the year" (as in Anno Domini)
• Te Ao Māori (literally "The Māori world"), Māori cultures and traditions

See also

• Alpha and Omega (disambiguation)
  • • A0 (disambiguation)