A name is usually one of the first things we learn about a new person, place, or thing. We need to know how to address it. And we probably won't notice anything strange about 99 names out of 100. But every now and then, something happens to a name that makes it problematic, and a name change is the only way to save the day.
10. The World Taekwondo Foundation had to change its name because of the Internet
Do you do martial arts at all? If so, you may know World Taekwondo. That’s the official name of the World Taekwondo Federation. But now you might be thinking, if it’s the World Taekwondo Federation, then why is it called the World Taekwondo Federation? Well, thanks to the modern world with its penchant for acronyms and poisonous language.
Although the World Taekwondo Federation was founded in 1973, they changed their name in 2017 due to the fact that their initials, WTF, had taken on a completely different meaning around the world. The organization was at a loss to overcome the negative associations with those three specific letters, and rather than use their fighting skills in a battle they couldn’t win, they simply dropped the F.
A few years earlier, the same fate befell the Wisconsin Tourism Federation, which in 2009, after 30 years in business, realized that the Internet was unbeatable. They became the Wisconsin Tourism Federation.
9. MRI used to be called NMRI, but the N stood for nuclear
Have you ever had an MRI in a hospital? They do about 30 million of them a year. And that big number is due to some small PR piece the day they changed the name of the machine.
When this technology first came out, it was called nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, and people didn't like it. This technology was developed in the 1930s and first implemented in the 1940s, and then became widespread in the 1970s, when no one wanted to go near anything called nuclear.
Ironically, the name comes from the way atomic nuclei interact in the presence of a magnetic field at a certain resonant frequency, and has nothing to do with the nuclear one that everyone was afraid of. However, to reassure people, they dropped the nuclear part.
8. Rapeseed oil used to have a different name
In 2021, Canada produced 12.6 million metric tons of canola oil. It is one of the most popular vegetable oils in the world and can be found almost everywhere. However, when it first came on the scene, it had a different name.
There is no canola plant. The name comes from a fusion of the terms "Canadian oil" and "low acid." The name used to be canola oil. And you probably don't need me to explain why canola oil was considered a problematic name. So it was changed to rapeseed in 1989.
Rapeseed gets its name from Latin. Rapum is the Latin word for turnip, and canola is a member of the same family. The horrific connotations were mostly innocent enough, but few were willing to launch a PR campaign to try to salvage the innocent use of the word. However, some people still stuck with it for a long time, such as the town of Tisdale, Saskatchewan, which grows huge crops of canola. If you happened to drive toward the town, until about 2016, you might come across scary signs that read, “Tisdale: Land of Rape and Honey.”
7. Jays potato chips were formerly called Mrs. Japp's
Jays Foods has been around since 1927. The company was founded by a man named Leonard Japp, and they initially sold pretzels. This expanded to other products and eventually included potato chips. In 1940, Mrs. Japp's Potato Chips hit the market. A year later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and anti-Japanese sentiment in America was at an all-time high.
Leonard Japp's unfortunate surname was identical in pronunciation to a popular racial slur for Japanese people. The chips were pulled from shelves across the country simply because of the name and people who associated them with the Asian nation.
Rather than try to combat both prejudice and misunderstanding, Japp decided to rebrand, calling the new company Jays because it began with the letter J and was available for use at the time.
6. Cincinnati Reds change name to Redlegs
During the Cold War, there was nothing more terrifying for a person in the United States than being around a communist. The idea of the “Red Scare” was enough to drive people out of Hollywood and ruin lives. Even today, it’s easy to see people using the word “communism” with the same sarcasm as some of our most popular curse words.
This anti-Soviet hatred became a problem for professional baseball as early as the 1950s. The Cincinnati Reds were founded in 1869 and were, in fact, the first professional baseball team in America. Back then, they were the Red Stockings. By 1881, they were simply the Reds when they moved from the National League to the American Association, a name that stuck for decades. Then came 1953.
McCarthyism was at its peak, the Korean War was going on, and Communism was the great bogeyman of the world. The Reds needed to distance themselves from their name, and Red Legs was a nickname they had been using for years, so they officially used it until 1959. They just used the "C" for a few years, and in 1961 the Reds came back.
5. Jaguar used to be an SS car
You don’t see a ton of Jaguars on the road these days, and the company has never been as big as Ford or Toyota. Jaguar Land Rover makes both luxury cars and SUVs, and the Land Rover model seems to be a little more well-known. The 2023 Jaguar F-Type costs around $74,000. However, the company might not exist at all if not for a strategic name change.
When Jaguar started out, it was the Swallow Sidecar Company in the 1920s. They made sidecars, so it made sense. But it was a pretty long name for a car company, so people started shortening it. Plus, the company itself was known for just using their initials on the front grille of the cars they made. So they all had CCs. You can see where this is going.
Throughout the 1930s, it became increasingly clear that SS cars were a bad idea, thanks to the Nazi Schutzstaffel. In 1936, the company dropped the initials, and by 1945, it was officially called Jaguar Cars Limited.
4. The Canadian town of Vall de Sources used to be asbestos
There are several towns in the world with very unfortunate names. Some are mildly offensive, some are silly, and some, like the town of Val-de-Source in Quebec, have been too closely associated with death and despair.
Vall de Sources wasn't always known by this name, it was only changed in 2020. Before that, the small French-Canadian town of 7,000 was known as Asbestos. There's nothing better than naming your town after one of the few products in the world that is synonymous with deadly cancer.
To be fair, the town got its name from Asbestos; in fact, it was home to the world's largest asbestos mine. They've had the deadly nickname since the 19th century. It certainly didn't have such negative connotations back then.
Over time, the city retained its name, even though asbestos was banished from almost everywhere. However, the city suffered in business terms because foreign investors did not want to deal with a place with such an ominous name.
The city held a vote on a new name, and Vall de Sources, meaning "Valley of Springs," won with 51%.
3. Biggby coffee used to be coffee
Coffee is made from beans, so it's not hard to see how a company that sells coffee might stumble across the Beaners name when trying to get their name out there. That's what happened to Biggby Coffee when they first came on the scene in 1995.
By 2007, the company had grown to 77 locations and was expanding rapidly. Today, there are nearly 300 in operation. But as they grew larger and more people took notice, the company also began to face criticism from the public over their name. Although owners Bob Fish and Mary Roselle claimed they were not familiar with it at all and did not intend to offend anyone, the word “bob” at the time had an established history as a racial slur against Latinos.
The company realized that the name didn't fit the image they wanted. They felt that if they didn't change it, even if they meant no harm, they would be condoning its use, so in 2007 they changed all their existing stores and renamed them Biggby, keeping the "B" logo from the original store but losing the name entirely.
2. The Washington Wizards Used to Be Bullets
The Washington Wizards have been playing in the NBA since 1997. However, the franchise has a longer history: They started in Chicago as the Packers back in 1961, then moved to Baltimore in 1963, when they became the Bullets. The team kept the Bullets name after moving to Washington in 1973, where they played first as the Capital Bullets and then as the Washington Bullets starting in 1974. So what made them change from the Bullets more than 30 years later? Two things.
First, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. He was a friend of then-Bullets owner Abe Pollin. Pollin announced the name change four days after his friend's funeral.
More important to Washingtonians was the fact that at the time, Washington was known as one of the most violent cities in the entire country. Gun violence was rampant, and Pollin acknowledged that the idea of their team being “faster than a speeding bullet” meant something different in that climate.
Fans weren't particularly happy at the time, although that was to be expected. However, they were allowed to vote on five potential new names, and the Wizards won.
1. The royal family took the name of the House of Windsor instead of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
It's a little difficult to keep track of all the names and titles used by members of the royal family, but the ruling family is descended from the House of Windsor. They came to power from the House of Hanover back in 1901. Except if you look at history, you'll see that the House of Hanover officially replaced the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
It was in 1917 that King George officially ordered members of the royal family to drop their German names. Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was ruled out and Windsor, a well-known name in British society that had been associated with the royal family for many years, was chosen.
Anti-German sentiment was growing and of course the First World War cemented it. The final straw was an air raid on 13 June 1917. The Germans bombed a school in London's East End and killed 18 children. The raid was carried out using Gotha bombers. It was just over a month before Windsor became the official name.
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