Covid 19 coronavirus Delta outbreak: What life in New Zealand is like when your name is Delta

Rebecca Ransley is applying for a council waste minimisation innovation grant for a reusable wall developed by her Auckland interior fitout company, Delta Interiors.

It's not the easiest time to own a business that shares its name with a Covid-19 variant that's leaving a trail of disruption and sadness around the world - including in your own city.

"I have to type Delta so many times," Ransley told the Herald on Sunday.

"And I'm cringing every time."

Delta McLeod, with her 17-month-old daughter Brielle, has heard a few jokes about her first name in the last month. Photo / Supplied

Almost 1200 kilometres away in Invercargill, 18-year-old Delta McLeod has been fending off jokes about her name since "Jacinda [Ardern] announced Delta was spreading through the country and everyone was like, 'Oh my gosh Delta, you've gotta stop'".

"It definitely gets old, but it's just a laugh. Everyone needs a laugh nowadays."

Across the Tasman, Lower Hutt-native Delta Gemmell,16, has also found herself the target of light-hearted banter from family on their weekly transtasman Zoom bingo nights.

"As soon as the Delta variant came along they all started with the jokes," she said.

"They say, 'Delta's always getting up to mischief' and 'We love you Delta, but go back to Oz'."

Ransley, McLeod and Gemmell are far from alone in having their name or business name hijacked by a particularly infectious new strain of Covid-19, given the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet by the World Health Organisation when they switched in May away from naming variants after their countries of origin.

Delta Air Lines employees, including its chief executive, have gone out of their way to avoid calling the Delta variant by its best known name. Photo / AP Photo / Rick Bowmer

The variant's technical name remains B.1.617.2, and that's what US aviation giant Delta Air Lines chief executive Ed Bastian chose to use when he wrote to employees last month asking them to get vaccinated.

"Over the past few weeks, the fight has changed with the rise of the B.1.617.2 variant — a very aggressive form of the virus."

Bastian later told the hosts of an American morning breakfast show, when they asked if the Delta variant name had caused problems for the carrier, that he doesn't use the "original variant name".

"If anything, I call it 'the darn variant'."

The message from the top has also taken flight, with air passenger Emily Gadek tweeting on August 26 that it was "genuinely hilarious how hard they worked not to say it [Delta]" during her recent flight.

Delta Interiors co-founder and director Rebecca Ransley. Photo / Supplied

Ransley, the Delta Interiors director, doesn't know if she'll change the company's name.

She's already been through the major job of re-branding once - choosing Delta Interiors as the name for the new entity formed when she and partner Thomas Witt merged their businesses, Warm White Interiors and By Thomas, in 2019.

"I was looking for something short, sharp and easy to spell," she said, "and a short email address, unlike Warm White Interiors."

Customers had been amused and sympathetic, and Ransley had embraced the sliver of humour in the situation, changing the tagline on her email signature after realising anyone who opened a message from her is confronted by "the bold DELTA signature".

"Please forgive the name - we had it before Covid did," the tagline reads.

The new tagline on Delta Interiors' director Rebecca Ransley's email signature. Image / Supplied

Some consumers may have a small, subconscious reaction to the word Delta, University of Auckland senior lecturer in marketing Bodo Lang said.

But it was highly unlikely customers would turn away in droves.

Almost two dozen businesses across New Zealand use the Delta name, according to the Yellow Pages.

They range from an agricultural spraying business to a dental lab to a plumber, a bakery and a motel.

Among the oldest is Ngāruawāhia's 121-year-old Delta Hotel, where an employee said patrons - pre-lockdown - hadn't commented on the name, and there were no plans to change it.

Delta Stock Crates customers haven't passed comment on the Timaru business' now Covid-related name - yet. Photo / Google Street View

He's had "a bit of a chuckle" about the business' name, Delta Stock Crates Timaru branch manager Blair Cochrane said.

But so far none of their transport operator clients had passed comment.

"I dare say there will be [at some stage] though."

Companies using the name Delta need to be careful in any attempt to be humorous about the name, given the ongoing loss of life caused by the Delta variant, Lang said.

"Being seen to make the wrong types of jokes on social media or in any other platform would be out of touch with people who are directly affected by the variant."

But Ransley's email tagline was a good idea, he said.

"[This is] likely to result in greater memorability and liking of such brands, which is, of course, what every brand wishes to achieve. So there is an upside to having the word Delta in your brand name."

Delta Interiors' experience was far from the first where businesses have found themselves stranded with a newly notorious name.

Sales of Ayds Diet Candy, first sold to the public in the 1930s, were savaged by the Aids pandemic 50 years later, and a name change to Diet Ayds was not enough to save the now-discontinued appetite suppressant.

But sales went up for Australian company Golden Circle's sarsaparilla soft drink - known as Sars - during the Sars coronavirus epidemic in the early 2000s.

New Zealand sales of the drink increased during the epidemic, and the BBC reported some people were asking if the drink was a medicine or offered protection against Sars, according to the Medical Journal of Australia.

More recently, the only dent in Corona beer sales came when Mexico shut down breweries in the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic last year, CBS News reported.

Companies, people and even animals with the name Isis also found themselves in an unenviable position when terrorist group Isis started capturing global headlines with brutal killings and attacks beginning last decade.

California-based biotech company Isis Pharmaceuticals and mobile payment app Isis were among those to change their names, and a British horse owner landed in the sights of Interpol when she labelled a money transfer for her ancient Egyptian goddess-named nag's horse bootcamp "funds for Isis".

The horse's owner later told media she'd learned her lesson on money transfers but wouldn't be changing her horse's name.

University of Auckland senior lecturer in marketing Mike Lee recommended the same for Kiwi businesses trading under the Delta name.

"I think just acknowledging it, rather than changing the brand name is a good way to go now. The general public is probably sick of all the other things they've had to change in the past 18 months.

"By sticking with the name it's almost a middle finger to the virus. And [that] might garner some support."

Singer Delta Goodrem joked with fans in July about changing her first name, as the Covid-19 variant of the same name spread in her Australian homeland. Photo / File

Australian singer Delta Goodrem also appears to have stuck with her name, after calling herself "the artist formerly known as Delta" in a tweet to fans in early July asking for "a new name".

McLeod and Gemmell are sticking with their now-infamous first names, too.

She'd wavered, Gemmell said, when Delta started spreading in Australia.

The teen lives in Albury, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, the two Australian states worst affected by the variant.

Delta Gemmell isn't giving up her name. Photo / Supplied

On canteen duty at netball she briefly considered changing her name badge from Delta to D.

"I got so many comments and I was always being asked about Delta, like I was an expert.

"But then I was like, 'No, I was here before the virus. It's my name and I'm going to claim it'."