Why did Kentucky Fried Chicken decide to start promoting itself as KFC? My friend says that it’s a “well-known fact” that KFC now uses “genetically engineered chickens,” and since they’re not real chickens, the company doesn’t advertise itself as Kentucky Fried Chicken. Of course, I dismiss this hypothesis as absurd…
That is, indeed, absurd. It’s disproven at http://www.snopes.com , but I’m too lazy to find exactly where. The real reason is that fried food kills people, while KFC is just 3 simple letters. People on health kicks avoid fried food like the plauge, but they’ll go to a bunch of initials for a tender roast every once in a while.
Here’s the actual link
You have an old one.
Snopes is your friend…repeat after me, “Snopes is my friend”.
Trust me, if you hear goofy stuff like that, if you look at Snopes you will further yourself and prove your friends wrong with goofy stuff like that. Oh and further people on the SDMB from having another eye rolling session. 
Some of us here have very strong eyeballs, we could tow a bus with them over the “Urban Legends” that get repeated over and over again…so repeat after me, “Snopes is my friend.”
Sorry I couldn’t resist, Earthlink was giving me a VERY hard time and well this just struck me as silly since an hour of signing on at 12000 kps really had me in psychotic stitches.
er 12000 bps…sheesh I wish I had some sense of sanity right now.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
< going crazy now >
I love this question!
Seriously, though, this is a perfect example of an Urban Legend, and a good introduction to thinking critically (read: being skeptical) about such things. Read the article, then read every other article on SNOPES.
As has been noted, and to sum up, the word the restaurant chain is wanting people to avoid thinking about is “fried,” not “chicken.”
…I live PDC (pretty damn close) to Louisville, KY, which is where the corporate HQ is located. I remember this from a few years ago. Little town, so ANYTHING makes news (for instance, the Kentucky Derby’s coming up in about a month. They recently devoted valuable air time during the local news to discuss what HATS would be worn to the race). KFC DID change its name because they wanted to steer away from the Fried reference, but that’s not the only reason. Everyone in this area referred to at as “KFC” for as long as I can remember. It’s a lot quicker to say, and it takes up less space advertising, too. The signs in front of the place, and the ads that they run, are more cost effective, since they don’t have to print “Kentucky Fried Chicken” on each one. In fact, a quick phone call to Tricon, the parent company, comfirmed this (I spoke with Patricia Carnes)
Hey, cool! This thread now completes a personal hat trick. I have now heard that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC because:
a) they couldn’t use the word “Kentucky” in their name (because “Kentucky” is copyrighted by the state of the same name);
b) they couldn’t use the word “Fried” in their name (because their chicken is pre-cooked); and now
c) they couldn’t use the word “Chicken” in their name (because they use genetically-engineered chicken-like meat).
Luckily all these problems came to a head at once, otherwise we would have been treated to the intermediate names of “K Fried Chicken” and “KF Chicken.”
Someone also told me that KFC couldn’t refer to Colonel Sanders as “Colonel Sanders” because of lawsuit problems with his heirs, and that’s why he’s referred to as “the Colonel” in their commercials. Do I get an additional point for that?
Really? Cool, this is all news to me. See, I had heard that they shortened the name because they actually got the chickens from Kalifornia. The problem was that the test groups didn’t like eating serial killing chickens.
If this were true than KFC is just easier to deal with than Kentucky Fried Genetically Engineered Bio-Mass
Indeed. The verb “to fry” does not properly refer to a cooking process that occurs inside a pressure cooker.
But, AHunter, I don’t think they wanted to have people avoid thinking about “fried” in the spirit of accuracy.
Our culture has come to view fried foods as unhealthy. They’re trying to avoid that sort of connection, so people don’t instead choose a much healthier fast food option, like a Big Mac or a Whopper with cheese.
I miss the old commercials in which someone was singing (in an accent), “Keeeyen-tucky Fraaaahhhd Chicken!”
Say, do they still have buckets?
It stands for Kentucky Fried Chimpanzee.
Yep. Also, KFC is trying to lure the Vancouver Grizzlies to Louisville, under the condition that they become the Kentucky Colonels. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/news/2001/03/23/grizzlies_business_ap/ The stadium would be named “The Bucket”. 
Off-topic, but:
I remember an interview once (long ago) with the marketing genius who was behind the revival of Yes and other bands in the mid-80s. He was being asked why all of his bands (sorry I can’t think of any other examples off the top of my head) had such short names.
He answered, simply, that the shorter the name, the bigger the letters could be. “You can see a poster for Yes from down the street,” he said, or words to this effect. “How far away can you be and still read ‘The Fabulous Thunderbirds’?”
Louisville lost out on that to Memphis, Tennessee. Which is good, I guess. The feedback in the Louisville area (where I live) was horrendous. No one liked to think that the name of the arena would be the Bucket. And quite a few thought that renaming the team to the Colonels was a bad idea, too (to answer an earlier post, KFC does still call Colonal Sanders by name. There is no litigation or other disagreements between Sanders’ estate and the company. That is also from Patricia Carnes, the spokesperson I talked to at Tricon).
I was always tickled by Roger Zelazny’s alternate-universe KFC in his first Amber book:
Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes…