We’ve seen disease names carefully chosen before. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus that causes the disease was commonly called the “Wuhan virus,” a reference to where the initial outbreak began. Per WHO guidance, diseases should not be named after geographic locations or groups of people. The official name they came up with for the virus, Sars-CoV-2, was based on its genetic similarity to the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak; then the disease name COVID followed from there. There have even been successes with the renaming of diseases and viruses. For example, before Down’s syndrome was named as such, it was called Mongolism—which was later dropped because it was misleading and offensive. Sin Nombre orthovantirus, was originally called Muerto Canyon hantavirus, after the location where it was found, but was changed after locals objected.

However, renaming a disease is no easy task, especially if the disease has been around for a while. “It’s quite a complex process that involves international classification of diseases, multiple countries, transparency, all of which is appropriate,” Tom Frieden, epidemiologist and president of Resolve to Save Lives, explained. One general problem with renaming, it seems, is that the current name is already well established in scientific literature. Switching things around could be confusing. The WHO Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee is open to changing the name, but according to Branswell’s writing at Stat, they have yet to receive a proposal for an alternative. So far, it’s looking like they will settle on Orthopoxvirus monkeypox. That … doesn’t seem much better!