Should we rename 'Chapel'?

[bradcray]

This issue is a place to put opinions and rationale for why we should or should not rename 'Chapel'. Where #9 focuses on the immediacy of considering a renaming, this issue is meant to be more of a place to put arguments in favor of or opposing the concept of renaming in general.

Brief background:

• Chapel was coined from "Cascade High Productivity Language" where "Cascade" was the name of Cray's HPCS project
• It's a name that was generally considered regrettable from the start by most, but which stuck before we came up with something better
  • the cause of the regret being the religious connotations of the term
• In spite of the near-universality of that regret, opinions vary about whether or not renaming now is worthwhile
  • In brief, opinions vary about the benefit::cost ratio of renaming
• An effort was made to rename 'Chapel' to 'Cascade' in the 2024-25 timeframe at HPE, but it was unsuccessful (in the time available)

[Note: If you have a specific proposal for a new language name that you like, you might not want to put it here if you worry about cyber-squatters taking your-lang.org]

[jabraham17]

I strongly feel we should rename the language. I find the religious connotations extremely regrettable. While we can explain them away as coming from an origin of CHPL -> CHaPeL, they are unavoidable.

Here are a few instances of this that come to mind recently

• comments on a public forum about this being the next generation of HolyC, or a new language for TempleOS (both of these are real software projects that have real religious connotations, instead of accidental ones)
• being asked if we make cool puns about Chapel, like going to church or praying
• telling someone what I work on ("I work on the programming language Chapel") and immediately being asked what it has to do with religion
• googling "Chapel Con 2025" and getting only results about churches
• LLMs making recommendations for Chapel art with churches, or trying to tie religion into something.

However, when one day Chapel takes over the world, many of those issues above will partly go away. Certainly not entirely, but better name recognition about what Chapel actually is will make things better. But I also feel we should change the name from a community growth perspective

We started to think about changing the project name (at least in my memory), around the time of 2.0. One of the ideas was to give Chapel a sort of face lift with the new 2.0 world. Something like "hey we have been around for awhile, but this is a big momentous transition and we are marking it with 2.0 and calling ourselves a new name". I think we are at a similar inflection point with HPSF. This is the perfect time to rebrand with a new organization, a new logo, and a new name.

In terms of the cost benefit analysis, this gives us the opportunity to bring a fresh name to people who have never heard of Chapel ("oooh whats this new thing called ") and to help create excitement within our existing community. We aren't hiding our past name, we are rebranding and refreshing our name (companies do this all the time with logos). Yes there will be work to change the name, but for the most part its a one time cost. And I think that is worth it.

[agirish]

@jabraham17 has already articulated concerns I share (so well that I don’t see a need to add more). I do want to note my agreement that the benefit of renaming would definitely outweigh the cons, IMHO.

[libregd]

One naming consideration I’d like to raise is phonetic clarity—names that end in a voiceless consonant often sound crisper and are easier to pronounce. For example, Cascade feels softer and less distinct than alternatives like Cascat or Castle, which end with a clean, sharp consonant that gives them more punch.

I also think shorter names, or those built from compound words or subtle wordplay, can strike a good balance between memorability and uniqueness. One idea I’ve been exploring is Chast, which echoes words like cast and fast, evoking a sense of action and performance.
Another option is Chapt, which has a compact, technical feel—though I’ve noticed it’s an archaic variant of chapped, so that might be worth considering depending on the tone we want.

[lydia-duncan]

I don't think we should rename. While I agree that the religious connotation is unfortunate, I think we're established enough that it is too late to make such a large change. I think it's likely to cause us to accidentally lose users (from people who missed the name change and then when they go looking for it only see broken/outdated links) or from users that are paying attention but have gotten attached to the name, and right now we want all the users we can get.

There are benefits to having a fresh name (people that have baggage from when the project was not as performant or established may be more likely to give the language a chance with a new name) but I think such benefits would be brief since I expect us to want to connect the new name and the old name strongly so as not to lose users for the reasons I mentioned above - anyone who had dismissed us before will probably not have enough time before hearing the connection to the old name to give us that chance.