Is there a term for the phenomenon of acronyms or initialisms changing what they refer to? For instance GAO used to stand for "General Accounting Office" and now the government agency has changed its name to "Government Accountability Office." The Nashville Network became The National Network and remained TNN. And the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) has been renamed National Conference for Community and Justice.
--Michael
I'm very sorry to hear about that last one, and I can add one even sadder: Years ago, before they went under, the PTL Club changed their name from "Praise the Lord!" to "People That Love".
But no, I don't know of any word for it.
Those of us old enough to remember typewriters remember when "cc:" meant "carbon copy", rather than "courtesy copy" as they now teach the kiddies.
That one's right up there with "DVD", which first stood for "Digital Video Disc", changed to "Digital Versatile Disc" when they realized you could put non-video data on them, and now officially doesn't stand for anything at all (unless you're a fan of "Dick Van Dyke", that is).
I had a long conversation with the manager of a restaurant a couple of months ago about whether the letters on the sign outside still stood for "International House Of Pancakes" as they once did, or had corporate officially changed the name of the place to just "IHOP". Never did come up with a definitive answer.
Ron Draney said:
I had a long conversation with the manager of a restaurant a couple of months ago about whether the letters on the sign outside still stood for "International House Of Pancakes" as they once did, or had corporate officially changed the name of the place to just "IHOP". Never did come up with a definitive answer.
The official corporate registration is "IHOP Corp." The name no longer contains "International House of Pancakes". It's funny that they made this move to be more marketable, with less emphasis on "just pancakes," but their press releases all contain a description of the company where the first thing mentioned is 16 types of pancakes.
To the original question, it's not quite a retronym; it's not quite a bacronym; it's not exactly a contrafactum, but it seems to me to have elements of each. Contrafacronym? I doubt a worse suggestion exists.
About half of them seem to be trying to be more politically correct in times changed from their origins.
Maybe something like a Correctronym. Maybe PCronym.
Makes me really appreciate the NAACP for still standing for what it has always stood for, both in words and in deeds, and keeping the historic meaning of the words in front of us.
If not just the PC ones, perhaps morphonym or transonym. How about an unchanging one (like NAACP) being an anachronomym?