There's just one problem with this:

"Imperial College London" sounds rubbish.

So how come no-one thought of this...

"“Intrinsic”; which is apparently too cool to see a name change."

Untrue. Part of the leaked presentation contains:

"Names which use ‘IC’ as a prefix or suffix will need to be changed – e.g. INTRINSIC, IC Reporter, IC Matters etc."

ICRadio? stoic? ICSM? All apparently banned under the new regime.

Those at the presentation also appear to have been given the following advice:

"Don’t talk about the branding project externally – yet"

....... and then they posted it on the intranet. Typical.

Lucky the Faculty of Engineering Union decided not to call itself "IC Engineers!!"

Just was well we chose "Live!" and not the other shortlisted title of "Topic" two years ago...

Thinking back to this time last year has anyone noticed that the new union logo does not involved the phrase 'ICU'.

Did the hierarchy of the union know about this change last year. Remember how desperate the sabbs were to get the new logo past and the problems it caused.

The only drawback to this thinking is the fact that it is still the ICU shop!!

Any thinkings?!?!?

Did the Union know about this change last year?

No. Hence why the ICU shop has only (relatively) recently begun to run down stock of IC branded regalia.

Hehehehe...you know what it sounds like?

SOAP BAR!!

Hehehehehehehe!

Thats my thought!

Imperial College Union logo, inspired by [DRM|http://www.drm.org?]

Leaked? All the Mech Eng students were already informed about this, IC Imperial, what the heck, its all the same...

Yeah, but as Oliver pointed out, Imperial College London sounds crap.

Here's another point though - a hell of a lot of people haven't a clue what Imperial College is or specialises in. While the old name (ICSTM) was a bit of a mouthful, at least it gave a clue as to what IC did.

Mind you, I guess 'Imperial College London' dropped the Science, Technology and Medicine bit because, let's face it, they are not major concerns any more.

How about 'Imperial College London Conference and Management Group'? Sounds a lot more accurate.

1. The Rector has used "Imperial" not "Imperial College" ever since he got here.

2. imperial.ac.uk domain has been in operation since my first year, 99/00. (I was one of the few people who used to use @imperial.ac.uk until I realised it wasn't as cool as "@ick ack uck").

2b) www.imperial.ac.uk was operational in my first year. It was switched off at some point last year (accidentally from what I gather...).

3. "Imperial College London" has been used on all IC press releases since March.

3b. The press have (since about April) started following suit and referring to us as Imperial College London (and, annoyingly, abbreivating us to "ICL").

4. I told you last term we were going to be Imperial College London!! (Sorry I haven't yet had a chance to rant about the lack of a comma, I'll try and get round to it this week.)

THE UNION?!

THE UNION?!

F***ing hell. He's really gone and done it this time.

No confidence in Sen Ganesh.

Andy - Just one of a long list of things I can think of.

No confidence in Sen? Did we have any to start with?

Andy, it get's worse. I'll tell you some time. Probably after August 1st ;-)

Yeah mails sent to @imperial.ac.uk addresses worked even in my first year.

Due to my work within the conference centre, I found out about this ages ago - the conference centre is getting lots of money to rebrand itself to the new name. Apparently the deadline for the new name is 14th January.

However, the interesting part of this is the fuss being kicked up by the conference centre in Wye - what do they get called, 'Imperial College London, Wye?', or as has been suggested, 'Imperial College Wye, Kent'?

It would be stupid to force Wye to have London in its title.

Whenever anyone asked me where I was studying, I always said Imperial anyway. Hardly anyone outside UL is going to recognise IC, but most of them will have heard of Imperial. Although sometimes I have said Royal College of Science, including when a TV reporter interviewed me on my way to see the Queen Mother's lying in state.

Surely the more interesting story is the Rector's intention to secede from the University of London? On the record - more details here.

Just to put a timescale on etienne last comment.

Degree status to be decided by the privy council by the end of this september.

Imperial awarding its own degrees and being a seperate institution minimum of two years time.

Who cares about whether we're part of UL or not? Whether we're going to be IC or ICL or IC,L or whatever is going to be much more important.

Save the comma!

Maybe I don't like being in the IC name.

Maybe I don't like being in the IC name either. I and C keep beating me up!

the comma was too small, looks like he was bullied out by the rest.

Spare a thought for us. Spare some change?

I'm starting to worry if I'm going to be out of a job soon too. Wonder if I'll get severance pay.

@imperial.ac.uk has been "in operation" ever since @ic.ac.uk came into being - I would assume that @ic was preferred as it was shorter and quicker to type. People didn't go in for "branding" by URLs back then...

As for "the Union" - I quote from the document given by the College Council to the Union as its constitution: "The name of the students’ union referred to in this Constitution shall be the Imperial College Union, also referred to as "the Union". "

Ahem.

Speak to people from the 70s, and they are not really very familiar with the abbreviation "ICU" (or should that be "iCU"?) - they just know "IC Union". Well, things change over time... blah

I have seen three different types of headed note paper from IC in the last year. The usual one, one with ICSTM stuck on it by the Chemistry Department and one with "Imperial College" followed by "University of London" underneath.

When I applied to IC to do my degree back in 1994, it was called and referred to as "Imperial College, London" then, with the London referring to the University (hence the comma). In interview I was told about the background of the College, the then constituent colleges and that it was part of London University. More importantly, Dr (now professor) Garry Rumbles also iterated that the Chemistry Department was the oldest part of the College, having its roots in the Royal College or Chemistry (later Normal College of Science). We then swiftly moved on to a fifth cup of nuclear coffee and nattered about Ipswich Town Football Club...

Yes, ICL is quite annoying...

And the name of the Union can now only be changed with the consent of Her Majesty acting in Council. It is in the College Statutes as "Imperial College Union".

So there we go.

i thought it interesting that even if we get university status, we won't be using that in the name!

Having been stuck in lots of presentations about the name change, i'm not convinced... and although they're meant to be running stocks of letterheads/ evelopes etc down, ready for the launch, they still printed my new business cards with the old name on it last week :-)

And yes, I agree Andy - what about the union! Shouldn't the students be doing something about it...

Why don't we put the London bit in front, giving London Imperial College or LIC. Then the union becomes LIC U, Mech Eng LIC ME and so on ...

You could have LIC'M for medicine, LICE for engineering and LICS for science.

Nothing wrong with "Imperial College London".

You won't find a comma in "Trinity College Dublin", for instance. Same with Oxford or Cambridge college. But admittedly, many people do break these rules.

I seem to remember that The Times' guide to English language writing style suggests that the comma should not used in such situations.

Unless I'm completely wrong...

Virtually all Oxbridge colleges that adopt the university's name in their title use a comma. The same is true of Durham.

That leaves Trinity College Dublin and a certain institution on Gower St. Frankly, I don't think we should be taking any lead from UCL - and there are small but subtle differences in grammar between Irish English and "proper" English. (E.g. correct Irish, "I will...", in English, "I shall...").

I think we should make the comma our new mascot.

Fools!!! How can you not know Imperial is out to take over the world!

"Imperial College London" is just a corporate brand... like "Nintendo Japan" or "Nintendo of America".

Of course, "London" is cooler than "Imperial College England", "...UK" etc.

"Imperial College of America"... can't wait.

Please sign the petition to save the comma in Imperial College, London and to save us from being ICL.

Have you guys got nothing better to do with your time?

At least your College hasn't converted to ", University of London" format, in the style of old Wye and Holloway scum...

Oh dear, all these wonderful students our University has produced, have very little else to do then set up a petition to save the comma.

Thought I'd have a very quick look at the petition though, and in no way did I feel compelled to add my name to the list. The sentance that read ' The lack of a comma in "Imperial College London" is not only grammatically challenged, but makes us sound like UCL', really did make me chuckle. If that isn't an example of pure snobbery and the general attitude that we are all 'gods' if we come to Imperial, then what is.

I am truly saddened by the obvious lack of personality and a life that many of you unfortunately have been blessed with.

May I hope that you one day realise, that a 'comma' is not the end of the world and that there really are more important things in life.

But just for the record, may Imperial College London, ICL, live forever.

hear, hear

Stop whining about shit that really doesn't matter. It's only you lot who care. There's far too much useless, random effort put behind equally useless, random motions in College, the Union, and the students.

At least ICU doesn't waste time and money on NUS...

Is the name change trying to avoid the common acronym "Integrated Circuit"? That shouldn't be a problem - ox.ac.uk and cam.ac.uk have no confusion at all.

Imperial College earned its reputation through academic work, don't let these brain-damaged management people decide what we should be called!

To random scientist:

people care about brand name because it is important. take examples of Post Office (spent millions changing its name then spent more millions to change it back) and British Airways (painting their planes with weird art then found it doesn't improve its corporate image)

Absolutely, why waste loads of money on a name change many people DON'T want when what REALLY matters is the reputation of Imperial College as an ACADEMIC institution and NOT that it's name sounds catchy and therefore it must be 'good' (somebody please explain to me HOW changing the name to Imperial College London is going to enhance Imperial College's status/brand/whatever it is they are trying to do - by the way, what ARE they trying to do.....I'm sorry, I am reasonably bright, but the point behind this move has got me completely stumped!)

As far as i can see (and i don't have 20/20 vision except backwards) the change to gimperial.ac.uk isn't a major shift.

It's just a re-emphasis on something we already have. I doubt they will be able to effectively kill ic.ac.uk yet. ALthough they can rewrite outgoing mail so that it comes from imperial.ac.uk instead of ic.ac.uk as they already do (type in just your login as a sending address and it will get rewritten - it's just a mailserver config problem) What they can't change is sites linking to ic.ac.uk - that will have to be a gradual change. What i think we will see is a gradual shift to promoting imperial.ac.uk. And this has already started happening. If you look closely at www.ic.ac.uk you will see the name and address for comments is the PR office - one Liz Carr, who i'm fairly certain used to be l.carr@ic.ac.uk - on every page i can see, that is now l.carr@imperial.ac.uk.

Interestingly, icl.ac.uk isn't registered yet. Hold your horses though, you can't buy it unless you are a UK institution with a valid claim. But if anyone has friends within a UK University or College also with a valid claim to that name - feel free to ask them to buy it - it could be worth something some day!

Someone commented in the petition that it is a system administration nightmare - i disagree. Changing the namespace is a matter of changing our DNS configs, and duplicating everything in the ic.ac.uk into the imperial.ac.uk then aliasing all the names in ic.ac.uk back to their imperial counterparts. I'm reasonably sure that the man in charge of the host database could do it quite nicely if you gave him a small lead time.

This has been a randomly technical discussion - whic serves little purpose. And i haven't attempted to talk about whether i like ICL. To be honest i don't care what Dickie calls the college, as long as my email address doesn't die, and my computers still talk to each other. I still signed the petition though - some traditions are worth fighting for.

A thought just occurred to me - if the powers that be are changing the name in order to put themselves on a par with oxbridge, and oxbridge got their reputation and 'brand' through centuries of history as academic centres of excellence (let's save the arguments about who is best for later, we all know the answer anyway), and by changing the name they are sweeping away a part of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine's history, SURELY the whole name-change thing, we can logically assume, is going to be a monumental failure/waste of time?

Does this mean that if you're Medic, and you get a DIC, that you leave imperial with an ICL Dic ?

Sam, the "man in charge of the host database" has just signed the petition and contradicted your [technological] assertions on DNS transfer...

bleh,

"The man in charge of the host database" is obviously being lazy ;oP

ahh, maybe not... i guess he does know a little more about it than me... maybe

What about the sub-domains of ic.ac.uk?

Will my DoC address go from @doc.ic.ac.uk to @computing.imperial.ac.uk. (Blech). Heck, why don't we change the whole domain name system and go for @computing.imperial.academic.united-kingdom?

Perhaps we can add future compatibily while we're at it by adding .earth to the end, too ;-)

Seriously. They may find they have problems with changing the domain controller for their lovely Windows network. According to a knowledgable friend of mine, this is something that you just cannot do.

I think the name of Imperial should reflect the university. Imperial College of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Magic the Gathering sums it up nicely.