There would be no need to look at the evidence then - regulators could just lean back in their armchairs, remember those old Fu Manchu novels they read in adolescence and decide the rights and wrongs of the matter on fictional racial stereotypes. No need for expensive hearings, no risk of the public disagreeing ... think of the saving to the national purse.
Of course, the marketing people will tell you that organisations change their names to leave their domestic origins behind them. I am sure there is something in this.
No doubt BP would have been better treated over their oil spill if they had not been so obviously a British company. "Hey buddy, do you get those limeys? We won the war for them; we gave them that Magna Carta thing; dammit, Brad Pitt even won Troy to add to their little empire and now they expect us to judge their corporations as though they were owned by Americans.
"They don't even eat tripleburgers for heaven sakes - no wonder their cars are so small."
But then the marketing people would find reasons for changing names, wouldn't they, because each name change means a fee for them and such fees support the capitalist system which has become so heroically synonymous with progress.
Perhaps another reason is that a change gives those in charge of an organisation a feeling of self-importance, a chance to create a little immortality for themselves - even if the exercise is expensive and valueless.
What else could have inspired the owners of the British Royal Mail to change its name to "Insignia"? I have no doubt that some marketing pundit charged a fortune for this big idea - a fortune duly wasted when a little common sense imposed by public opinion forced them to change the name back.
It would be nice if the new short-form business names were amusing but, alas, they seldom are. If you want entertainment from your abbreviations you would do better to look to the military, to General Napier perhaps and the message "peccavi" (Latin for "I have sinned") which he was reported to have sent back to London after the conquest of the Indian province of Sindh in 1843.
Actually the report was wrong, it was in the magazine Punch after all, and the word was used in the story as a double pun because Napier had far exceeded his orders to put down a local rebellion. Still, if Napier doesn't deserve credit for the pun, it is only fair that I should put the balance right with his reply to a Sikh who complained at the British abolition of the practice of burning widows on their husbands' funeral pyres.
"Be it so," replied Napier. "This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation also has a custom - when men burn women alive, we hang them and confiscate all their property.
"My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
When you look at the way in which the over-sensitivity of the British authorities to ethnic issues has led to the exploitation of young women by Pakistani sex gangs, you begin to think General Sir Charles Napier, imperialist though he was, would have made a better home secretary than many recent ones.
John Watson writes from Islington in London
