24 Companies That Changed Their Names, and the Naming Mistake Behind Each One

Companies get forced into new names for seven recurring reasons: the name outgrew the business, it locked them into one category, someone else already owned it, it was too generic to own, it failed in another language, an event made it toxic, or the rebrand itself was the mistake. Below are twenty-four documented cases grouped by those mistakes, each linked to a source, with the reported cost where one exists. Further down, we run two new briefs through Namilio and catch the same mistakes in a fresh shortlist.

The clearest case is the World Wrestling Federation. On 10 August 2001, England's High Court ruled that it had breached a 1994 agreement with the World Wide Fund for Nature over three letters. Nine months later it was called WWE (WWE, 6 May 2002), its logo had lost the "F," and it was running a campaign titled "Get the F Out" (WWF trademark dispute). Rebrands like that are corrections; the mistake happened years earlier, at the naming stage. Where a rebrand's cost is publicly reported, the figure is here with its source. Where it is not, we say so.

The Seven Naming Mistakes That Force a Rebrand

The least embarrassing mistake, because it only happens to companies that succeed. The fix is nearly always the same shape: keep the famous name on the product, invent a new one for the parent.

Why did Facebook change its name to Meta?

Facebook renamed its parent company Meta on 28 October 2021 because the company brand and one of its apps had become the same word. The announcement said Meta "brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand." The Facebook app kept its name.

Why did Google create Alphabet?

Google did not rename itself in 2015; it built a parent above itself and became a subsidiary. Larry Page's "G is for Google" letter explains the word: Alphabet "means a collection of letters that represent language," and doubles as alpha-bet, "investment return above benchmark." Search kept Google; the moonshots got their own roof.

Why did Square change its name to Block?

Square announced on 1 December 2021 that its parent would become Block. The reason was collision: "The Square name has become synonymous with the company's Seller business," so the parent stepped aside to let that unit "own the Square brand it was built for." Cash App and TIDAL kept their names.

Why did Apple Computer become Apple Inc.?

Steve Jobs announced the change on 9 January 2007, at the Macworld keynote where he introduced the iPhone and Apple TV. Dropping "Computer" reflected an expanded focus on consumer electronics. A word that described the whole business in 1977 described a shrinking slice of it thirty years later.

Why did Zomato change its name to Eternal?

Zomato's board approved renaming its listed parent on 6 February 2025, and the company became Eternal Limited with effect from 20 March 2025. The parent now holds four businesses (Zomato, Blinkit, District and Hyperpure), the rename was tied to Blinkit becoming a significant driver of its future, and the Zomato app kept its name (PTI via ETV Bharat). Tesla made a similar move in February 2017, dropping "Motors" from its name to present itself as more than a car maker (Engadget).

Mistake 2: The Name Locked You Into One Category

A category noun is a promise about what you sell, and also a fence. When the category shrinks, or customers already use something shorter, the fence becomes the problem.

Why did Weight Watchers change its name to WW?

Weight Watchers announced on 24 September 2018 that it would become WW, under the tagline "Wellness that Works," repositioning from weight loss to overall health (CNBC). Its announcement spoke of "WW Wellness Workshops" and opened the programme to people who wanted healthy habits without focusing on weight loss (company release). The initials kept the old name's equity while retiring the word the company no longer wanted defining it.

It did not save the company. WW International entered Chapter 11 in May 2025 with about $1.5 billion of debt, having failed to keep pace with GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic (ABC News), and exited the process on 24 June 2025 (Simpson Thacher). That was the drug market, not the name: a rebrand repositions a business, it cannot manufacture demand.

Why did Dunkin' Donuts drop "Donuts" from its name?

Dunkin' Donuts announced on 25 September 2018 that it would become simply Dunkin', from January 2019, as "one of many steps to transform itself into the premier beverage-led, on-the-go brand." The release also admitted the obvious: customers had long been "naturally and affectionately referring to the brand as 'Dunkin'.'"

Why did Kentucky Fried Chicken change its name to KFC?

Kentucky Fried Chicken formally adopted KFC in 1991. The reason was stated plainly at the time: "The key is to reduce dependence on the word 'fried,'" Kyle Craig, then president of KFC's US business, told Businessweek in February 1991, as the chain added non-fried dishes (Businessweek, 1991). The initials kept the rhythm of the brand while hiding the word that had become a liability.

Why did Research In Motion change its name to BlackBerry?

RIM announced on 30 January 2013, at the New York launch of BlackBerry 10, that the company would take its product's name with immediate effect, and moved its stock tickers to BBRY on Nasdaq and BB in Toronto (PCWorld). With the company's future riding on that launch, the parent simply took the name people already knew.

Mistake 3: Someone Else Already Owned the Name

The only mistake a court can force on you, and the most preventable. By the time a ruling lands you have spent years building recognition into a word you are about to lose.

Why did Andersen Consulting change its name to Accenture?

Andersen Consulting lost the right to its own name. An August 2000 arbitration ruling let it split from Andersen Worldwide and Arthur Andersen and rejected the $14.5 billion its former parent had claimed, but left it paying about $1 billion and dropping the Andersen name by the end of the year (Washington Technology). The replacement, Accenture, "a coined word that connotes putting an accent or emphasis on the future," took effect on 1 January 2001 (Accenture's announcement).

The name was submitted by Kim Petersen, a consultant in the firm's Norway office. What the relaunch cost in marketing has never been published.

Why did the WWF change its name to WWE?

On 10 August 2001, England's High Court found the World Wrestling Federation had breached a January 1994 agreement with the World Wide Fund for Nature over the WWF initials, the wwf.com domain and its "scratch" logo. On 6 May 2002 it announced it would become World Wrestling Entertainment, with CEO Linda McMahon saying the company began considering the change when the Fund prevailed in court.

The initials had been contested since 1994, yet the company kept expanding into the disputed territory. When the Fund later pursued damages, the Court of Appeal ruled in 2007 that it was an abuse of process to pursue that claim: the company lost its name and nobody collected.

Mistake 4: The Name Was Too Generic to Own

Descriptive names explain the business instantly, but a description belongs to everyone in the category. Google began as Backrub, a search engine that, in Google's own words, "used links to determine the importance of individual pages" (Google's history): a name for the mechanism, not the promise.

Why did the Sci Fi Channel change its name to Syfy?

NBCUniversal announced the change on 16 March 2009, and the reason was ownership. Its press release said Syfy, "unlike the generic entertainment category 'sci-fi'," "firmly establishes a uniquely ownable trademark" that could stretch into games, films and other businesses (quoted by /Film). The channel switched on 7 July 2009 (Adweek). If your name is the plain words for your category, you own a description, not a brand.

Why did Overstock rename itself Bed Bath & Beyond?

"Overstock" named a business model, closeout inventory, rather than a brand. The company bought Bed Bath & Beyond's intellectual property out of bankruptcy for $21.5 million in June 2023, relaunched its US site under that name on 1 August 2023, and renamed the corporation Beyond, Inc. from 6 November 2023. In March 2024 it brought Overstock back as a separate brand: narrow, not worthless.

Mistake 5: The Name Did Not Survive the Border

A name only has to fail in one language you sell into, and the failure is not subtle: it is a word your sales team cannot say out loud.

Why did Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo change its name to Sony?

Akio Morita discovered on a US trip that Americans had trouble pronouncing "Totsuko," the abbreviation the company used in Japan. In 1958 the company became Sony, built from the Latin sonus (sound) and "sonny," 1950s American slang for a young boy.

Why was the Mitsubishi Pajero sold as the Montero in Spanish-speaking markets?

Because pajero is vulgar slang in Spanish, roughly "wanker." Mitsubishi sold the same vehicle as the Montero in North America, Spain and most of Latin America, and as the Shogun in the United Kingdom, keeping Pajero for Japan and other markets until production ended in 2021.

Why did Nissan drop the Datsun name?

In October 1981, Nissan said it would shift its cars from the Datsun name to Nissan over about three years, to build one global image (Christian Science Monitor, 1981); Datsun lingered in some markets until 1986. It produced the best-documented rebrand cost on this list, and five years after the programme ended, Datsun was reportedly still the more familiar name (Wikipedia, citing brand strategist David Aaker).

Top Gear put the bill at about $500 million: $30 million to change the signs at 1,100 Datsun dealerships, $200 million to replace the "Datsun, We Are Driven!" campaign with "The Name is Nissan", and $50 million on Datsun adverts that had been approved and were then made redundant (Top Gear). Part of a name change is work you already paid for and threw away.

Mistake 6: The Name Became Radioactive

Sometimes the name was fine and the company was not. Once an event attaches to a word, advertising will not detach it, so the word gets replaced.

Why did Philip Morris change its name to Altria?

Philip Morris Companies became Altria Group in 2003, publicly to reflect a portfolio that then included an 84% stake in Kraft Foods. Its own consultants, the Wirthlin Group, had been blunter: "The name change alternative offers the possibility of masking the negatives associated with the tobacco business" (Smith and Malone, American Journal of Public Health, 2003).

Why did ValuJet change its name to AirTran?

ValuJet Flight 592 crashed in the Florida Everglades on 11 May 1996, destroying the airline's safety reputation. ValuJet Inc. announced the acquisition of the much smaller Airways Corporation on 10 July 1997, closed it on 17 November 1997, and took the acquired company's name. Time called it "a corporate disappearing act".

Why did Blackwater change its name twice?

Blackwater USA began changing its name to Blackwater Worldwide in October 2007, the month after the Nisour Square shootings; it became Xe Services in February 2009, and Academi in 2011, after a group of private investors bought it. Three names in four years, each further from the word the public had learned.

Why did Aunt Jemima change its name to Pearl Milling Company?

PepsiCo announced in June 2020 that it would move away from the Aunt Jemima name and likeness, a brand whose image carried racial stereotypes dating back to its origins. The replacement, Pearl Milling Company, was announced on 9 February 2021 and reached stores from June 2021 (PepsiCo). Mars said that June it would evolve the Uncle Ben's brand, and announced the new name, Ben's Original, on 23 September 2020 (NPR).

A retired name is not automatically a released one. Until a registration lapses or is cancelled, the mark stays on the register, which is why a name can be unavailable when nobody appears to use it.

Mistake 7: The Rebrand Itself Was the Mistake

The mirror image of the rest: companies that changed a name they should have kept, each underestimating how much recognition sat in the old word.

Why did the Post Office become Consignia, and then change back?

The Post Office Group renamed itself Consignia plc in January 2001, after a consultation with the branding firm Dragon Brands. Its chief executive defended the coined word because it "describes the full scope of what the Post Office does in a way that the words 'post' and 'office' cannot"; The Independent later called it "one of the most disastrous corporate rebrandings ever undertaken" (Post & Parcel, reprinting The Independent). The group changed its name to Royal Mail Group plc on 4 November 2002 (The Gazette).

The Independent put the cost of the January 2001 makeover at £2m. The larger cost was the reversal: a name the public had known for generations, replaced and then restored in under two years.

Why did Tribune Publishing rename itself tronc?

Tribune Publishing became tronc, Inc. in June 2016, short for "Tribune online content", signalling a pivot to digital, machine learning and video under the slogan "From Pixels to Pulitzers." It was ridiculed immediately, including by John Oliver. The board reportedly voted to drop it in June 2018, and on 4 October the company announced it would be Tribune Publishing again from the close of business on 9 October (Chicago Sun-Times).

Why did Twitter change its name to X?

Elon Musk replaced the Twitter name and bird logo with X in July 2023, retiring a brand whose verb, "tweet", had entered the dictionary. The old name has not been released: when a start-up petitioned the USPTO in December 2025 to cancel X's "Twitter" and "Tweet" trademarks as abandoned, X sued it a week later (Euronews). No published figure isolates what the rebrand alone cost.

Fidelity, a shareholder, repeatedly marked its stake down: by the end of August 2024 it had cut the value of its holding by 78.7% since the purchase, implying about $9.4 billion for the whole company against the $44 billion Musk paid (TechCrunch). That reflects everything that happened at the company, not the name, which is why any clean cost figure quoted for this rebrand should be distrusted.

Why did Cracker Barrel reverse its 2025 logo change?

Cracker Barrel unveiled a simplified logo in August 2025, dropping the old man and barrel, and after a wave of customer backlash said on 26 August: "Our new logo is going away and our 'Old Timer' will remain" (ABC News). Note what this case is not: the name never changed. The customers who punish a change are often not the ones it was designed to attract.

What These Rebrands Actually Cost

Rebrand costs are widely quoted and rarely sourced. Here is every figure in this article with a public source, plus the ones without.

The Checklist That Would Have Caught Most of These

Every mistake above is cheap to avoid at the naming stage and expensive to fix later. Run each shortlisted candidate through these seven questions first.

1. Does it still work if you double your product line? "Apple Computer" fails this test; "Apple" does not.
2. Does it name a category you might leave? Weight Watchers, Dunkin' Donuts and Overstock all had to unpick a noun.
3. Can you actually own it? A plain description of your category cannot be protected (the Syfy lesson). Search the USPTO trademark database and your state's Secretary of State.
4. Is someone with a bigger legal budget already using it? Andersen Consulting and the WWF both lost names they had used for years.
5. Say it aloud in your three biggest export markets. Pajero and Totsuko are the kind of problem a native speaker spots in seconds. That review costs nothing.
6. Would you keep this name attached to your worst possible headline? ValuJet, Blackwater and Philip Morris all learned a name absorbs whatever happens to the company.
7. Are customers already calling you something shorter? If so, that is your real name. BlackBerry and Dunkin' both eventually surrendered to it.

We Ran Two Briefs Through Namilio and Applied the Checklist

On 15 October 2026 we gave Namilio two briefs, with the brandable, evocative and compound styles at the default creativity, and took the first 12 names each one returned. We then looked up every .com in Verisign's registration data service (RDAP), the registry's own record of which .com names exist (IANA lists Verisign as the .com registry). "Available" means nobody had registered it. The score is the engine's own 0 to 100 rating. Run a brief again and you will get different names, because the model samples.

Brief 1: “a meal-kit delivery startup”

One of the 12 had a free .com: HomeSteep, which reads more like tea than dinner. The engine's top-scored name, MealKit (95), is Mistake 4 in its purest form: the plain words for the category, which a competitor can use as freely as you can. Its .com was registered, as were all six single dictionary words: Crate, Basket, Parcel, Pouch, Chiller and Porter.

Brief 2: “a cybersecurity consultancy for small firms”

One of the 12 had a free .com: CalmFortress. Six of the 12 lean on the same two security words, shield and guard (ShieldHarbor, Shielden, ShieldAudit, Guardly, TrustGuard, GuardReview), which is how a category fills up with names too similar to tell apart. Question 3 of the checklist exists for exactly this: run the trademark search before you get attached to any of them.

Across both briefs, 2 of 24 names had the .com free. Across all 42 briefs we ran for Namilio's guides that day, 72 of 504 (14%) did, and not one single dictionary word was free. Category words are priced accordingly: in Namilio's dataset of 8,586 publicly recorded domain sales, squaremeal.com sold for $55,000 in 2013 and meals2go.com for $44,200 in 2020 (what domains sell for).

What You Can Check Yourself, and What You Cannot

Be precise about which risks a tool removes. Namilio checks domain availability across up to 22 TLDs, and on Premium screens each name that has an open domain against live trademark records across 200+ offices. That is a preliminary conflict scan, not a clearance search. It does not check state business registries, social media handles, or marketplace shop names. A free .com here can still collide with a registered mark, the collision that cost Andersen Consulting its name. See our guides to trademarking a business name and checking name availability.

Name It Once

None of these companies chose a bad name in a vacuum. They chose one that was accurate for the business they had that day. The failure was horizon, not taste. The counterweight is volume: generate far more candidates than you need, then eliminate on ownership, category and pronunciation. Read how iconic brands got their names, work through the naming process, and build a shortlist with Namilio's free AI name generator or company name generator.

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