5 Company Names That Became Weird As Time Went By
A Virginia company launched a satellite into low-earth orbit in 2021. The company controls surveillance satellites, so it named the first mission to launch them “Hawk,” while this second mission was named “Hawk 2.” They named the first satellite in this second mission “Hawk 2A.”
If you told them that this name, a couple years later, would be considered a reference to oral sex, they would never have believed you. But some names change meaning as time goes by. Just ask the folks over at such companies as...
Analtech
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In 1965, a company called Custom Service Chemicals hired a marketing firm to come up with a new name. The marketers suggested “Analtech,” short for “Analytical Technologies,” and everyone in the company seemed to agree this was a good idea. Sure, the word anal existed in 1965, referring to something unconnected with analytics, but this name was pronounced different from that, so surely no one would get confused.
Analtech manufactured scientific glassware, and it did good business. As the decades went by and people found the name increasingly funny, the company didn’t consider that a problem. If anything, the amused attention meant more customers. Then they noticed that when people watched product videos on YouTube, the algorithm next recommended videos about the other sort of anal. Plus, offices had filters that blocked anal websites of all kinds.
So, they switched branding, calling themselves iChromatography, a name that swiftly felt dated. In 2015, the owner renamed the company to Miles Scientific. They remain unashamed of their past, however, and the word “Analtech” is still at the top of their website.
SS Cars
We don’t know for sure why a 1930s British auto company called itself “SS Cars.” One of the founders said the letters stood for “Standard Swallow,” while they also traded under the name “Swallow Sidecar Company.” Either way, they did a solid decade of business until car manufacture halted for World War II.
When the war ended, they were ready to start up again, but they had to grapple with how “SS” had taken on a new meaning. Everyone now associated those initials with Nazi soldiers. That included people who couldn’t say for sure what the letters stood for in Germany (they first stood for Saal-Schutz and then for Schutzstaffel).
Perhaps SS Cars could have held on to their name, which had nothing with Germany at all. But it would be hard to convince customers of this, considering this is what SS Cars’ logo was:
via Wiki Commons
Some rebranding was in order. And so, the company changed its name to one that you know better today: Jaguar.
SUX
When airports first opened in the U.St., they each had a two-letter code. When more airports sprang up, our list of available codes starting running short, and we switched to a three-letter standard, which we today call the International Air Transport Association code. The FAA changed several existing codes by simply adding an X at the end. This is why Los Angeles’ airport is famously LAX.
Sioux City’s airport had had the code SU, which now switched to SUX. This wasn’t a problem in the 1930s, back when “sucks” didn’t have any negative connotations, but it became increasingly embarrassing as time went by.
They appealed to the FAA for a possible change of code. In 1988, the agency granted their request. If they wanted, said the FAA, the airport could now get a new code: GAY. This was because the airport’s full name was Sioux Gateway Airport.
The airport declined the offer and is still known as SUX today.
ISIS
In 2014, a whole lot of entities used the name “Isis.” There were hotels named Isis and ships named Isis and a magazine called Isis about the history of science. ISIS was also an acronym for a great many organizations, most starting with the word “international.”
One of these organizations was a fictional one — the International Secret Intelligence Service, from the cartoon Archer. The show started in 2009, several years before the terrorist group also known as ISIL or the Islamic State. When you watch the secret agents of Archer traipse around the globe, you’re not supposed to be thinking about real terrorists cutting off people’s heads. But the writers realized that the show constantly namedropping “ISIS” might leave a bad taste in people’s mouths.
FX
Conveniently, they’d just done a season-long arc where the agency had been shut down, forcing the spies to instead embark on a quest to produce an album of country music. Now that they were going to return to the usual spy stuff for Season Six, the story offered a natural excuse for a rebrand. Going forward, the agency would be known simply as The Agency.
Archer ran for nearly a decade more, including three years of dream sequences set during a coma but returning to spy operations in the end. Meanwhile, ISIS — the terrorist group, not the spy agency — lost all of their territory by 2019, so the spies got the last laugh.
Arab Attack
Speaking of terrorism, there was a DJ in Miami in the year 2000 who went by the name Arab Attack. The name had nothing to do with terrorism, he said. It was about him, a guy born to Palestinian parents, attacking you with music.
Then came 2001 and the attacks of 9/11. Arab Attack figured his name now might possibly rub people the wrong way. So, he decided that from that point on, he’d be professionally known as DJ Khaled.
Before, “DJ Khaled” had seemed a questionable name to go by. It was just his actual name (Khaled Mohammed Khaled), a name that loads of other people have as well. Indeed, a later artist who simply went by “Khalid” would go on to chart at the same time as DJ Khaled, confusing a fair number of people. But the change was likely the right choice.
It was either that or use the other name he sometimes used professionally, “Beat Novacane,” and that’s not a name you can yell over a song. The rhythm’s all wrong.
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