Nomen est omen: why we need to rename ‘antimicrobial resistance’

Abstract

Abstract The naming of diseases is a critical aspect of public health communication. In light of the recent renaming of the ‘Wuhan novel coronavirus’ to COVID-19, the names of other health threats must be reviewed. In particular, a new name is urgently needed for the global challenge typically referred to as ‘antimicrobial resistance’. The current name is inconsistently used, difficult to pronounce and lacks meaning for lay audiences. It also fails to express the magnitude of the phenomenon’s potential consequences for human medicine. This article reviews and evaluates key findings from several cross-disciplinary streams of research on the psycholinguistic properties of names. These include early psychology literature pertaining to the concept of ‘word attensity’, recent cognitive research on ‘processing fluency’ in the context of word recognition, and relevant marketing literature examining the components of successful branding strategies. Three key criteria—pronounceability, meaningfulness and specificity—are found to influence the perception of names and these are discussed in the context of antimicrobial resistance. The article demonstrates that the current term of ‘antimicrobial resistance’ falls short with regard to all three criteria and concludes with specific recommendations for the creation of a new name. Only the strategic choice of a single term that is (i) short and easy to pronounce; (ii) intuitively meaningful to lay audiences and indicative of the existential threat linked to antimicrobial resistance; and (iii) uniquely associated with the topic of antimicrobial resistance is likely to bring about overdue change in the global discussion of antimicrobial resistance.