Why Was UMD Asked To Change Its Name?

What's in a name? Or, more importantly - what's in a name when it belongs to more than one entity?

In an article published yesterday in The Diamondback - the independently-run student newspaper of the University of Maryland, the case is made that our University of Minnesota-Duluth should change its abbreviation from UMD to UMnD to avoid confusion on Google-based search engines.

You see - the University of Maryland also abbreviates their name as UMD. This similarity often causes mistaken internet search results.

The article goes on to petition many reasons why UMD (in this case the University of Maryland) should be allowed to keep their abbreviation while UMD (the University of Minnesota-Duluth) should be forced to change theirs.

One of the points they ("they" being UMD - or, to provide clarification - the University of Maryland) make is that their website URL is UMD.edu. They also argue that their pride runs wide as their abbreviation includes the state's postal abbreviation of MD.

While I believe that the article is (probably) more tongue-in-cheek than not, I offer my own argument that they should change their abbreviation to more-closely match our nomenclature - whereas we call ourselves UMD because we are the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Following that same example, the University of Maryland - which is located in College Park, Maryland would become UM-College Park.

One of the user comments at the bottom of the article on their website correctly points out that the savvy internet searcher would filter their terms to better reflect the university that they were searching for. Another commenter also correctly pointed out that search engines like Google usually provide results based off of location proximity.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Probably neither side. But it is interesting that they keep referring to the "Minnesotan mud". Our latitude is much farther north than Maryland. We should be arguing about snow totals instead!

Go Bulldogs! Go Terrapins!