When companies change their names, it often means that the business wants to shed an old, negative image and replace it with something more in tune with modern sensibilities. Hence Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, gave itself the much less tobacco-y name Altria, and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s new, updated name, KFC, conveniently avoids the word “fried.”
Oil companies, perhaps sensing that many people think of “oil” and “big oil” in negative terms, now want to use their names to suggest that they do more than sell oil. British Petroleum started the trend by changing its name to the vaguer BP and giving itself a green logo shaped like a sunflower.
But it doesn’t always work. Consider a couple of Scandinavian oil companies—sorry, a couple of Scandinavian wind and solar companies that also happen to drill for oil. This month, Norway’s state-owned oil company, straightforwardly named Statoil, announced that it plans to change its name to Equinor, which company officials believe better emphasizes its commitment to clean energy and other happy things that aren’t oil. The new name, according to Bloomberg News, was “acquired from an Oslo veterinary practice specializing in horses” for an undisclosed sum. The vet, it turns out, offers “services from equine dentistry to castration.” The new name was widely derided by analysts and unions. And in Denmark, the new name of the state-owned oil company is Orsted. That name change was, however, a little more defensible. The old name of the company was Danish Oil and Natural Gas, or DONG. The name had become something of a distraction in English-speaking markets.
It’s just another reminder that you can’t be too careful when you name a large enterprise. We’re told, though we weren’t able to confirm, that when the Fayetteville, N.C., bus system was first proposed in 1976—it’s now smartly called the Fayetteville Area System of Transit, or FAST—administrators suggested calling it Fayetteville Area Rapid Transit.
