The Real Reason KFC Stopped Using The Name Kentucky Fried Chicken

Back in 1991, the restaurant chain known as Kentucky Fried Chicken decided that it was time to rebrand. In addition to changing up the look of things like the logo and its chicken bucket, the company decided that it was time for a new name as well. The 20 letters and six tricky syllables would be swapped for just three of each: KFC. At the time, the president of the company said that the change was about contemporizing the brand and allowing KFC to become not just the nation's favorite fried chicken restaurant, but its favorite chicken restaurant. There may, however, have been a bit more to the story than just that.

The change of name did coincide with KFC launching products like grilled chicken and skinless chicken on the bone, attempts to reach a health-conscious portion of the market that might rather forego fried foods. Switching the name to KFC allowed customers to push the fried concept to the back of their minds, potentially seeing the restaurant in a slightly healthier light.

Another point worth looking at is that KFC was also expanding its international footprint around this time, especially in non-English-speaking countries like China, where a simpler name like KFC could make a big difference for the brand. KFC has a different name in Quebec, where it is PFK — short for "Poulet Frit Kentucky," the French translation of the name — and perhaps the chain learned from that.

The final reason that Kentucky Fried Chicken might have shortened its name to KFC is that the Commonwealth of Kentucky actually trademarked the name of the state. This meant that in order to keep using that brand name, KFC would have to start paying into the government coffers. While this trademark was never publicly stated as a reason for the name change, the timing is suspect. The Commonwealth pushed through the trademark in 1990, and Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC very shortly thereafter. Considering that KFC had been operating under that longer name for nearly four decades at that point, it is a compelling argument, even if it was never directly acknowledged by the company. 

Of course, the absence of any satisfactory explanation also opened things up for speculation. The 1990s were perhaps the pinnacle of urban legends — when people had the technology to do things like send out chain emails, but not the resources to properly fact-check what they were receiving — and this chicken chain's name change spawned a real doozy. As the story went, the mad scientists working in Kentucky Fried Chicken's research and development laboratories had let the profit margins of the company take the reins as they cooked up mutant birds that could be used to fill those cardboard buckets. These birds were allegedly altered to increase the size of the breasts and tack as many as six additional legs onto the creature, thus turning each bird into its own 12-piece meal. Of course, the FDA couldn't allow these mutants to be classified as chickens, so to keep using them, Kentucky Fried Chicken would need to switch its name to something that didn't reference chickens, like KFC.

That story is, of course, complete bunk. There are plenty of good reasons why KFC became the new moniker for this chicken chain, ranging from things like making mental room for now-discontinued KFC menu items like grilled chicken to avoiding paying fees to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Fortunately, we can say with certainty that it had nothing to do with mutant birds — or is that just what they want us to believe?