Fandom argues constantly about whether a rebooted title is still the same thing. The name carries over, the creative team does not, the tone shifts, and everyone has to decide whether the label still means anything.
Alt text: A stack of vintage comic books beside a modern games controller on a desk
That argument is not confined to entertainment. It runs through product categories too, including some unlikely ones. Canadian cannabis retailers still list honey oil as a category, decades after the thing that earned the name was common. Those retailers serve Canadian customers only, and it is an adults-only category, so readers here should treat it as a naming example rather than a shopping suggestion.
Why Do Old Names Stick Around?
Because names are shared infrastructure, and changing them is expensive.
A name that people already search for, ask for and recognize carries commercial value that a more accurate label does not. Replacing it means teaching an entire audience a new word, which almost nobody wants to pay for.
There is also a nostalgia premium. A term that sounds like it comes from an earlier era signals continuity with that era, whether or not the underlying product has anything to do with it.
Search behavior locks it in further. Once a name accumulates 20 years of people typing it, abandoning it means abandoning the traffic, and no commercial operation does that voluntarily.
The result is a lag. The thing changes first, the vocabulary catches up later, and sometimes it never does.
What Did Honey Oil Originally Mean?
Something quite literal, and visual.
The name described appearance. Early cannabis oil extracts were viscous and amber, ranging from golden to dark brown depending on the method and the material. They looked like honey, so that is what people called them.
That was a useful description in a market with no labels and no testing. Color was one of the few quality signals a buyer could actually assess, which made appearance-based names genuinely informative rather than decorative.
Plenty of older product vocabulary works the same way. Names describing appearance, texture or origin all did real work in markets where nothing else was disclosed, and they persist mostly as habit once disclosure arrives.
How Did the Product Actually Change?
Substantially, and in a direction that makes the original name inaccurate.
Photo by Mockup Free on Unsplash
Alt text: A small amber glass jar catching light on a plain surface
Modern distillate is refined much further. Additional processing strips out plant material, waxes and other compounds, which raises purity and, incidentally, removes most of the color. A well-made distillate is often pale to nearly clear rather than amber.
- The early product was defined by what was left in.
- The modern product is defined by what has been taken out.
- The name describes the first and is applied to the second.
So a buyer choosing by name alone is navigating with a description that stopped being literal some time ago. The label on a regulated product now carries the information that color used to carry badly.
Where Else Does This Happen?
Constantly, once you start noticing.
Comics run the clearest examples. A character name persists across decades while continuity, tone and creative teams turn over completely, which is exactly the tension in any Batman 66 revisit or line-wide relaunch. The name is the only stable element.
Games do the same thing. Sequels and remakes inherit a title that carried specific expectations at a specific time, and audiences argue about whether the inheritance is legitimate. So do film franchises, car model names, and any Marvel heroes property that has been rebooted more than once.
The general pattern is well studied. Academic work on brand and terminology drift is easy to find through collections like JSTOR, and the mechanics are the same whether the product is a comic or a consumable.
Does the Old Name Mislead Buyers?
Sometimes, and regulation is usually what resolves it.
In an unregulated market, a legacy name is all a buyer has, and it can be quietly wrong. In a regulated one, mandatory labeling does the work instead. Contents, potency and testing are stated, and the informal name becomes a category heading rather than a claim.
That is the honest resolution to the problem. The name stops mattering once something better sits beside it on the package.
Canada legalized adult use in 2018, with the minimum age set provincially:
- 18 in Alberta.
- 19 across most provinces.
- 21 in Quebec, following its 2020 change.
Product rules including packaging and labeling sit under federal law, and the Department of Justice publishes the legislative framework behind it. None of that applies to readers in the United States, where the position varies by state.
Frequently Asked Questions About Product Naming
Why Not Just Rename the Product?
Because the old name is what people search for. Renaming sacrifices discoverability for accuracy, and most sellers will not make that trade voluntarily.
Do Legacy Names Ever Die Out?
Occasionally, usually when regulation forces a standard term or when a new name is genuinely more useful to buyers.
Is This Different From a Brand Reboot?
The mechanism is similar. A reboot keeps a name whose associations were built by something else, and asks the audience to transfer them.
What Is an Old Name Actually Telling You?
As a historical artifact rather than a description. It tells you what the category used to be, not what is in the package now.
Reading a Name as History
The useful habit is treating a familiar name as evidence about the past rather than information about the present. That applies to a franchise being remade and to a product category that has quietly moved on.
Names are sticky because they are useful, and they keep being useful long after they stop being accurate.
Knowing which is which is most of media literacy. It turns out to be most of label literacy too, whichever aisle you are standing in.