Ok, here is the scoop. I called Anne on the phone, and asked her directly about this story, and it is true. The reason for the change was for ‘brand identity’. ‘Xe’ is definitely different and this was voted on by the leadership at Blackwater.
I asked Anne if they had any other names they were playing with, and she could not comment at this time.
As for the meaning- Xe is the chemical element symbol for Xenon, a colorless, heavy, odorless noble gas. Xenon occurs in the Earth’s atmosphere in trace amounts.
Or maybe they are going for the greek general Xenon, or going off the greek meaning of the word Xenon ‘stranger’. Either way, this is a very interesting choice of word or symbol.
And I have to say, the inside joke I see in all of this, and I do not know if it was intentional or not, is that the musician Prince changed his name to a symbol as well. At least we can pronounce Xe. LOL
They have also changed the name of their training site and it is now called US Training Inc. Interesting stuff. –Matt
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APNewsBreak: Blackwater dumps tarnished brand name
By MIKE BAKER – 1 hour ago
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning its tarnished brand name as it tries to shake a reputation battered by oft-criticized work in Iraq, renaming its family of two dozen businesses under the name Xe.
The parent company’s new name is pronounced like the letter “z.” Blackwater Lodge & Training Center — the subsidiary that conducts much of the company’s overseas operations and domestic training — has been renamed U.S. Training Center Inc., the company said Friday.
The decision comes as part of an ongoing rebranding effort that grew more urgent following a September 2007 shooting in Iraq that left at least a dozen civilians dead. Blackwater president Gary Jackson said in a memo to employees the new name reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security.
“The volume of changes over the past half-year have taken the company to an exciting place and we are now ready for two of the final, and most obvious changes,” Jackson said in the note.
In his memo, Jackson indicated the company was not interested in actively pursuing new private security contracts. Jackson and other Blackwater executives told The Associated Press last year it was shifting its focus away from such work to focus on training and providing logistics.
“This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the U.S. government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world, including the flagship campus in North Carolina,” Jackson said.
The company has operated under the Blackwater name since 1997, when chief executive Erik Prince and some of his former Navy SEAL colleagues launched it in northeastern North Carolina, naming their new endeavor for the area swamp streams that run black with murky water. But the name change underscores how badly the Moyock-based company’s brand was damaged by its work in Iraq.
In 2004, four of its contractors were killed in an insurgent ambush in Fallujuah, with their bodies burned, mutiliated and strung from a bridge. The incident triggered a U.S. siege of the restive city.
The September 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square added to the damage. The incident infuriated politicians both in Baghdad in Washington, triggering congressional hearings and increasing calls that the company be banned from operating in Iraq.
Last month, Iraqi leaders said they would not renew Blackwater’s license to operate there, citing the lingering outrage over the shooting in Nisoor Square, and the State Department said later it will not renew Blackwater’s contract to protect diplomats when it expires in May.
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the company made the name change was largely because of changes in its focus, but acknowledged the need for the company to shake its past in Iraq.
“It’s not a direct result of a loss of contract, but certainly that is an aspect of our work that we feel we were defined by,” Tyrrell said.
Story Here
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The definition of Xe or Xenon at Wikipedia
Xenon (pronounced /?z?n?n/[2] or /?zi?n?n/[3]) is a chemical element represented by the symbol Xe. Its atomic number is 54. A colorless, heavy, odorless noble gas, xenon occurs in the Earth’s atmosphere in trace amounts.[4] Although generally unreactive, xenon can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the formation of xenon hexafluoroplatinate, the first noble gas compound to be synthesized.
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Xenophobia, Xenon
Filed Under December 2008, columns
Or maybe raccoons. I’ll bet they’re good at it.
Dear Word Detective: I was just searching your archives for the origin of “O.K.,” which you handled quite succinctly, and discovered to my amazement that there are no words under “X.” What about “xenophobic” and “xenon”? Does no one care whether or not they are related or where they came from? — John Pearson.
Well, lookie there. Apparently it’s National Neglected Letter Week. We just finished adding a “Z” word to the Word Detective website archives at www.word-detective.com, and now we’re wrestling with “X.” Does this mean we’re done and my career (such as it is) is winding down? Cool. I’ll have more time to devote to farming. Right now, I’m thinking of raising alpacas. Has anyone out there had any luck teaching them to rob banks?
Onward. I, for one, do care deeply whether “xenophobic” and “xenon” are related. Perhaps I’m unduly invested in the idea of an orderly universe, but the thought of millions of completely unrelated words bouncing around chaotically gives me a headache. Fortunately, “xenon” and “xenophobic” are close cousins. By the way, the “x” beginning both words is pronounced as a “z.”
The root of both “xenophobic” and “xenon” is the Greek “xenos,” meaning “strange” or “stranger.” Coupling “xeno” with the (also Greek) “phobia,” meaning “fear,” we get “xenophobia” meaning “fear of strangers” or, more commonly, “fear of or extreme antipathy toward foreigners.” Oddly enough for a word based on ancient Greek elements, “xenophobia” is a relative newcomer to English, only making its first appearance in print in 1909. “Xenophobia” is one of those words which, although neutral in itself, carries a pejorative tone in modern usage and is more often employed in partisan accusations than in civil discourse. The current debates in the US over immigration and foreign trade policy, for instance, have been peppered with accusations of “xenophobia.”
“Xenon,” being an odorless, invisible, inert gas making up a minuscule part of Earth’s atmosphere, is considerably less controversial. Xenon was discovered in 1898 by William Ramsay and Morris Travers, the same guys who had earlier discovered neon and krypton (thus paving the way for both Las Vegas and Superman).
In naming “xenon,” Ramsey and Travers were reflecting the fact that the gas was “strange” in that it was very heavy, as gases go, and possessed some other odd characteristics. Similarly, the name “krypton” is based on the Greek “kryptos,” meaning “hidden,” because it is rare, and “neon” on the Greek “neos,” or “new,” because it was previously unknown. These three gases are, by the way, among the six “noble gases” (”noble” in this case being used in an archaic sense of “stable” or “not reactive”), and the other noble gases (argon, helium, and radon) are also named from Greek roots (respectively, “argos” (idle, inert), “helios” (sun), and “radius” (ray, as radon is formed from the decay of radium).
Word Detective Link Here
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Xenon (in Greek ?????) was an officer in the service of Antiochus III the Great (223–187 BC), who was sent, together with Theodotus Hemiolius, against Molon in 221 BC. They retired before Molon under the shelter of the towns.1
Wiki Here