Naming

What’s in a Name?

Changing your name is a delicate matter. Your life has apparently changed in a way so fundamental that you wish to acknowledge it with a new name. This is quite the expected thing when you enter a monastic community. Or change gender. Or when a college becomes a university, which is what happened to the Catholic College of Tilburg in 1986, after it had already twice changed its name before.

1927 Roman Catholic Business School

In 1927, the Roman Catholic Business School was founded, with a name that adequately represented the religious identity and the nature of this educational institution. Three years after that, the Economic Technological Institute (ETI) was established, followed by the launch of the Maandschift Economie (Economics Journal) to propagate ETI’s work. And so, within ten years after its foundation, there was nothing to stop the first name change that would serve to highlight that it specialized in economics.

1936 Catholic College of Economics

Up until 1963, the College had only one faculty: Economic Sciences. Social science subjects would also be taught from 1947 onwards, but it would take until 1963 for a genuine Faculty of Social Sciences to become a statutory reality. Then a law was adopted that specified that Tilburg was also permitted to embrace, besides the social sciences, a Faculty of Law. This expansion into three Faculties then forced the educational institution into a second name change.

1963 Catholic College of Tilburg

The Catholic College of Tilburg (KHT) was captioned “for economic, social and legal sciences.” In the mid-seventies, when the KHT was beginning to liaise with institutions in other nations, the International Office apparently had a rare moment of clairvoyance when it ordered special international stationery that had the name “Tilburg University” on it, without this, incidentally, having been in any way preceded by any management decision-making.

1986 Catholic University of Brabant

With the adoption of the Scientific Education Act on 1 September 1986, Tilburg, like all Colleges of Technology, obtained the much coveted status of being a university. This obviously necessitated a third name change. The name that would be most self-evident (Catholic University of Tilburg) never got any serious consideration because its abbreviation would be offensive in Dutch. Much to the delight of the province of North-Brabant, then, the University’s regional roots were immortalized in the name Catholic University of Brabant. This did not go entirely without saying but required extensive lobbying in The Hague, as each university institution is supposed to have a nationwide rather than a local orientation, and sweet-talking with the Board of Governors, who were keen on a saint’s name. “Catholic University Tilburg” was to be used abroad, if it were not for the fact that “Tilburg University” had already been in common use for over ten years, as the International Office astutely pointed out to the Executive Board. And so the Board, faced with a fait accompli, had a bit of a grumble and put up with the inevitable, providing that the word “Catholic” managed to appear somewhere on the University’s stationery. Four different names in all but sixty years, each for a different reason, should suffice if common sense prevailed. Not so. Soon after 1986, “Catholic University of Brabant” and its abbreviation “KUB” appeared to be generating widespread disgruntlement. It was causing confusion, for one thing, with letters being addressed to the “Catholic University of Breda.” Belgium, for another, already had its own KUB in Brussels. In America, where all major Catholic universities are Jesuit-led, people believed that the KUB was governed by Jesuits. And anywhere else people mistakenly thought that the KUB and Tilburg University were two different universities.

2002 University of Tilburg

And so the name “University of Tilburg” suggested itself to those with a firm grasp of the obvious, a name that spells out unerringly what you are and where you are. Except for the designation “Catholic,” which would be lost. But the Catholic President of the Board at the time, Yvonne van Rooy, was nothing if not resourceful. She managed to persuade the Board of Governors, including its episcopal representative, with two pledges. “University of Tilburg” would only serve as its first name but not as its full official name, which was to remain unchanged as the “Catholic University of Brabant Foundation.” And all official correspondence would include the subtitle “Inspired by the Catholic tradition.” In 2002, all was set and everyone was overjoyed: “Universiteit van Tilburg” was used in the Netherlands, “Tilburg University” abroad and the mail and Internet extension was .nl, so everyone knew that Tilburg University was located in the Netherlands.

2010 Tilburg University

Eight years later, rampant internationalization syndrome had affected the University’s name. “Universiteit van Tilburg” had to go in favor of “Tilburg University,” and the email and Internet extension was changed into “.edu,” an extension only used for educational institutions in the US. The new name creates some perplexity: in the Netherlands, for example, most media keep using “Universiteit van Tilburg” regardless, and in the US, the .edu extension calls for countless explanations to clarify that Tilburg is not located in the US. This latest name, nevertheless, is a stayer, or so it seems.

Universitas Catholica Tilburgiensis

There is one more name that is used, a Latin one. This one is exclusively found on the University’s bronze medal of honor, designed by artist Jos Reiniers. These medals are awarded to people on special occasions, such as to Peter Noordanus in 2017 when he resigned as mayor of Tilburg.