The honor society was named Pi Gamma Mu from the initials of the three Greek words that describe the society's objective: "Politixes Gnōseōs Mathetai" ("Πολιτικές Γνώσεως Μάθεται"), the study of political and social science. The term "Politixes" or "political science or phenomena" encompassed the field of economics, which was then commonly referred to as political economy, its original name. Pi Gamma Mu stood not only for scholarship in the social sciences, but also for synthesis and cooperation among its various branches. It was an early advocate of an interdisciplinary as well as a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of social problems.