Mrrzy, look at it this way.

Cats and dogs and budgerigars and hamsters are all pets. No one says hamsters are cats because it's easier.

Jenovah's Witnesses and Amish and Mennonites and Doukhobors have an important thing in common: they believe that war is always wrong and refuse military service. No one uses the word "Quaker" to refer to them all collectively; we say "conscientious objector" or "pacifist".

So soldiers, sailors, aviators and marines are all ... what? Members of the armed forces. Military personnel (although sailors who studied Latin in school will wince at that). Service personnel. In French, des militaires.

If you know someone well enough to comment on her occupation, you know if she's a soldier or a sailor or a wrench-bender in the Air Force. If you don't, but still wish to comment, you say "She's in the forces, but I'm not sure what she does."

If it's the 11th of November and you're in Ottawa, and it's not raining too hard, you go to the Cenotaph for the ... military parade. The sailors are at the front, because the Navy takes the right of the line in a mixed contingent (NB: in British and Commonwealth forces).

But on the first Sunday in May, the people holding up traffic on Confederation Square are all in dark blue uniforms because it's Battle of the Atlantic Sunday. So it's a ... naval parade.

Journalists who don't know any better occasionally refer to a "military ship". Their editors, who do know better, promptly change that to "naval vessel" or "warship", depending on whether it's a destroyer or a diving tender.