Whatever his many other abilities, Thomas Bignold was no marketing man. In 1797 the Norwich merchant and banker created the Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire, a name that would not have survived the first marketing meeting today. Whatever the views of Bignold's descendants in Norwich, many of whom have objected strenuously to the change of name for their biggest employer, Aviva at least has the benefit of brevity. It is the feminine form of the Hebrew word for spring.

The insurer will be hoping that the exercise will be better received than several earlier attempts to alter the public perception of an organisation by changing its branding. One name change that aroused ire was the disappearance of the revered Opal Fruit in favour of the arriviste Starburst. Another unfortunate rebranding exercise involved PricewaterhouseCoopers' consultancy unit, which decided that it wanted to be known as Monday.

Undeniably, two of the great marketing disasters were the British Airways “ethnic fins” and the decision that the Post Office would be better appreciated if it was known as Consignia. BA was attacked by Margaret Thatcher when the airline decided to play down its Britishness by replacing the Union Jack on its aircrafts' tailfins with ill-defined ethnic patterns. The policy was drawn up when Robert Ayling was chief executive. It did not long survive his departure in 2000. Consignia was born in March 2001, the name Post Office being, for some reason, seen as “too generic”. Everyone hated the new name and it was swiftly changed.

But the mass of corporate takeovers over the past two decades have led to new names that have stuck. The old British Steel, merged with its Dutch equivalent, became Corus. When Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness at the start of 1998, one of the best-known names in the hospitality industry collided with one of the most famous brands on the planet. The marketing men hit on the seemingly meaningless “Diageo”, from the Latin for “day” and the Greek for “world”. It was loudly criticised at the time, but the name is now firmly established.

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