Academi? Latin homework or new company name?

What's an Academi?

Or an Altria?

Or a Verizon, for that matter?

Country of origin? Type of speech? Can you use it in a sentence, please? Can you see an Academi, way out there on the Verizon, from the second-floor Altria?

In 2003, tobacco giant Phillip Morris became Altria. The switch quickly became the subject of countless studies and public-relations theories.

"The corporate practice of adopting vague, faux-Latinate names can help companies shed their image problems," one creative director told the New York Times.

There was precedent. The mish-mashed name Verizon emerged from the telecommunications company AT&T.

Then late last year, Blackwater, which had become Xe, took a faux-Latinate name to help shed its image problem: Academi.

A nonword. A nothing. A potential autocorrect. A sterility that resonates something but doesn't mean anything.

On a macro level, a corporate name change is mildly disorienting. A postmodern identity crisis. Something else to write a check to. A different stock ticker to follow in the mutual-fund prospectus.

But on the micro level, a name change creates confusion, a purposeful obstruction, and signals a lack of accountability. A familiar corporation allows the public to say, "we know, roughly, what you've been doing, even if we don't exactly understand what it is your company actually does."

What Academi does is train and provide security operatives for the U.S. military. When the company was known as Blackwater, some of its employees were accused of killing civilians in war zones.

But Academi's new name is as bothersome as the neckline of a wool sweater, and, for the overly sensitive, it would most certainly cause hives.

Academi is vague and exasperating and, in case no one noticed, misspelled.

The only people comfortable going to an academy dubbed "Academi" are those who would feel comfortable with a diploma from the Skewl of Artz and Letters.

Which is to say no one over the age of 18.

And this is the problem with made-up names. They're hard to trust and hold little credibility with the public, two things the former Blackwater desperately needs.

Blackwater, once headquartered in Moyock, N.C., is dead, but only kind of. The name still lives in video games and T-shirts and in lawsuits and news stories, but is not the property of the new company. Xe always was viewed as a joke, a transparent attempt to play on America's short-term memory when we're more sophisticated than that.

Academi may be a top-notch training school, or it may be a place Arnold Schwarzenegger stopped by in "Total Recall." No one knows because they've never seen the word before.

Then the natural instinct is to be afraid.

Which, given Blackwater's history and pending lawsuits, might not be a bad thing.

There's another side to the name-switching game.

Last week, the local Courthouse Galleries became the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center. Board members said it was important that Portsmouth was part of the center's name.

The change makes sense. The center's purpose is clear: It provides not only art but culture, two items people in this region have heard of before.

Everyone understands the new name. No one feels threatened or insulted by it. No one feels they're the victim of a scheme hatched by consultants.

The new name uses real words, the kind found in the dictionary.

The kind any academy attendee would most certainly know.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss