This is a pedantic point, and I know it's a controversial one. But I would suggest that it's highly debatable whether 'CBI' is an acronym.
While collecting my thoughts for this note, I came across a word that I don't remember hearing before: initialism. It's not a very pretty word (also sounds American), but it works for me.
dictionary.com defines an initialism as "a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately, as FBI for Federal Bureau of Investigation."
I think I hardly need point out the similarity between 'FBI' and 'CBI'.
dictionary.com's first definition for an acronym is "a word formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of words in a set phrase or series of words and pronounced as a separate word ... "
Note: "a word ... pronounced as a separate word".
Dictionary.com gives three examples of acronyms: "Wac from Women's Army Corps, OPEC from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or loran from long–range navigation." You will note that 'wac', 'opec' and 'loran' all sound like words – even if they don't mean much in isolation from the phrases that they represent (Women's Army Corps, etc.). 'CBI', on the other hand, is just a series of three letters.
Dictionary.com's second definition for the word 'acronym' is "a set of initials representing a name, organization, or the like, with each letter pronounced separately; an initialism."
I would have to say that 'CBI' does fit this definition, so I may have to concede that you can call it an acronym if you want to. But dictionary.com dilutes its case somewhat by giving an alternative word for this type of thing: and this is where 'initialism' comes in.
The second definition of an initialism is: "a name or term formed from the initial letters of a group of words and pronounced as a separate word, as NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organization; an acronym." So there you have it: an acronym is an initialism and an initialism is an acronym.
You could take the view that an acronym is an initialism, but an initialism is not necssarily an acronym. I hesitate to argue with dictionary.com, but I would suggest that there's no point in having two different words that each mean the same two things, when it's clear that one of them was coined to mean one of those two things and the other was coined to mean the other.
I refer mainly to dictionary.com because it's easy for you to check while you're online, if you feel so inclined. But I've also checked Chambers (13th edition, 2014) and it lists 'initialism' – giving pretty much the same definition as dictionary.com, including the fact that it's an acronym, and noting its North American origin.
The New Oxford Dictionary (2001 edition) also lists 'initialism', with a very similar definition; but it doesn't equate it to 'acronym'. It gives 'BBC' as an example.
And that's good enough for me. From now on I'm going to use the word 'initialism' whenever I need to refer to constructions like CBI, FBI and BBC. And I'll do my best to encourage others to do the same.
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