Why is Penn's name so stupid?

45_Percenter
Wed, 09 May 2012 08:36:09 +0000

nmf1102:

By adopting “Penn,” the university is trying to find its own niche. I think it would have been better off with “UPenn.”

Once again, the university did not adopt “Penn,” which implies that the name had no currency before the logo rebranding–and again, it primarily was about the logo–of the early 2000s. “Penn” was THE most common nickname in use for the university–other than just simply “Pennsylvania”–for literally centuries. And as someone who’s been an alum since the 1970s, I can tell you from personal experience that the overwhelming majority of students and alumni have called the university “Penn,” and not “UPenn” or any other name, for at least the past several decades and–as evidenced in old school songs and publications–for more than a century. The “Penn” nickname is not just something that the university cooked up recently as a marketing gimmick; it’s based in centuries-old tradition.

“UPenn,” on the other hand, did appear in regular usage only recently, in the wake of the adoption of the “upenn” URL for the university’s web site less than 20 years ago. And that was based on a convention already established by other schools that had been participants in early versions of email and the internet (e.g., UDel, UMich, UChicago, etc.). To my knowledge, that is the ONLY time that the university has ever referred to itself as “UPenn,” and that was obviously for a very specialized purpose.

To adopt “UPenn” as the university’s official brand would, quite frankly, run counter to centuries of tradition, and to the current practices and “instincts” of hundreds of thousands of living Penn alumni and students. :)