Hey Pandas, What Things Have Changed Their Name Due To Insensitivity? (Closed)
What products, teams, etc, have had their name changed because it was insensitive?
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Fairy Penguins were renamed to Little Penguins in Australia because the powers that be decided it was offensive to gay people. Really stupid in my opinion, because fairies as mythical creatures were around before it being used as a homophobic slur, and it was done after that term became less popular.
the pancake brand Aunt Jemima got changed to the Pearl Milling Company
NFL team Washington Redskins. "Redskins" is a slur against Native Americans. The previous owner of the team, Dan Snyder - who was a terrible person in general - pushed back against calls to change the name, but then the George Floyd protests happened, and public pressure just became too much, and they retired the name. Comically, they couldn't come up with a new name before their season started, so they were called the "Washington Football Team" for two years, before coming up with their current name: the Commanders.
I'm glad they changed the name, but "the Commanders" is such a bad name in my opinion. From what I know, "the Red Wolves" or "Red Tails" were both options, and would've helped bring attention to the namesakes, which would be cool
I think the word gay? It used to mean happy. Now it is something entirely different. I don't mind though
There is a cheese company in Australia (but now majority owned by a Canadian company) that used to be called C**n. It was changed because of the connection to a racist slur, even though it is not one we use in Australia.
Uncle Ben's Rice. Cleveland Indians baseball team. Mercifully Scunthorpe remains untouched.
I just found out about some other Aussie ones. F**s (f a g s) I did know about btu forgot. They were called that because they were lolly cigarettes and that is our slang name for cigs (previous to the homophobic slur), I assume because a f****t was a name for a bundle of twigs used for lighting fires. Ones I hadn't heard about (probably well before my time lol) were Golliwog biscuits (golliwog dolls were ones with dark skin and afro-type hair, which are now not common and not given that name), N****r-by liquorice, Creole cream biscuits and Chico lollies (which I had heard of, they are a jelly baby type brown lolly with chocolate flavour) which I didn't know was a slur against people of Latin American descent (which I guess is good, because it mustn't be common around here?).
The Dixie Chicks, they changed their name to The Chicks. Because of racist history with the word Dixie I think. I’m not a hundred percent sure but you can correct me if I’m wrong, but please don’t downvote me.
When the Dixie Chicks spoke out against President Bush they offended a lot of their fans. Radio stations would not play their musik and concert attendance dropped. It took them years to recover and dropped the Dixie, partly to be progressive and partly to leave their old reputation behind.
