Software development company Synergy is changing its name to Fronde. The main reason for doing so is because the company wants to undertake more work overseas and Synergy “is already taken”, says Synergy marketing adviser Kate Blake.
“Synergy is not an easy name to brand overseas because there are so many other organisations with that name,” she says. “Changing our name to Fronde is a way of being able to take ourselves into that overseas market.”
The company’s structure has also changed slightly along with the name, says Blake. The company now consists of three separate divisions: the banking solutions arm, Fronde Bank Anywhere; the software development arm, Fronde Synergy, and Fronde Always, the company’s managed-services offering.
Fronde is a French word dating back to the time of the French Revolution, according to Blake. Then, the word referred to “the spirit that makes people challenge current thinking and lead the wave of change”. “We quite liked the feeling of that,” she says.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia, Fronde refers to a series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653, and the word fronde means sling. Paris mobs used the slings to throw stones at the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin. The word was later used to refer to anyone who criticised the current powers in place, says Wikipedia.
In December 2005, hosted services provider HdS changed its name to Revera, Latin for “in truth”.
At the time, the company’s chief executive, Wayne Norrie, said in a statement: “Our recent past three-letter acronym was a triumph of IT over good marketing, made worse by its easy confusion with our recent past shareholder, HDS.”