By John D. Spalding

Publishers Weekly reports that Harper San Francisco has changed its name to Harper One. The reason? To “completely dispel the idea that it is a regional publisher,” PW says. I don’t get it. HSF has been the premier publisher of religion and spirituality titles for decades–backlist bestsellers include Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions, Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist—and it’s such an established brand that the only people who might confuse it for a regional house are people who know nothing about it. And frankly, who cares what they think?

Imagine this: A customer walks into Barnes and Noble and picks up a bestseller by, say, John Dominic Crossan. He scans several pages with great interest until he looks at the spine and thinks, “Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Harper San Francisco published this book? I want a historical take on Jesus. Not a San Francisco take on Jesus!”

Not gonna happen.

To exaggerate slightly, it’s like The New York Times deciding to change their name to “Times One” so they’re not mistaken for a local paper.

Furthermore, what exactly does Harper One mean? Were they inspired by the deep-dish success of Pizzeria Uno, or perhaps the diet-conscious appeal of Pepsi One—“Just one calorie”? Or are they planning to launch Harper Two? In which case, they may need to distinguish themselves further, taking a page from the Olsen twins’ marketing plan for their Mary-Kate and Ashley One and Two perfumes. Whereas scent One features “light top notes of red berries,” scent Two “offers middle notes of night-blooming jasmine,” and together they express “both sides of your personality—sweet and sassy!” Come to think of it, Harper may no longer receive proposals for Bay Area travel guides, but they might start getting requests for three-ounce spray testers.

My point is, if the name works, why change it? HSF has been hugely successful in recent years, with New York Times bestsellers such as Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics and Bart Ehrman’sMisquoting Jesus. This season the company stands to make a fortune with Sidney Poitier’s The Measure of a Man, which, PW says, has “up to more than 900,000 copies in print, with Poitier’s appearance on Oprah still to come.” And The Jesus Family Tomb, now number six on The New York Times bestsellers list, has benefited from a national controversy that promises to last through Lent. This morning, co-author Charles Pellegrino debated the book’s claims with the Catholic League’s William Donohue on “The Today Show,” which flashed the book’s cover a half-dozen or so times.

In all fairness, “Harper One” will probably work out. People will eventually get used to the name, and because it’s so ambiguous they’ll be able to read into it whatever they want: monotheism, interconnectedness, unity, individualism, or even a mix of unity and individualism, a la the military’s slogan, “An Army of one.”

I’ll admit, part of the reason I stumble over the new name is because I have ties to the old one. In the mid-90s, I worked for the company, a proud HSFer. In fact, I still have friends there, and, I guess, alas, I’ll just have to get used to calling them HO’s.

John D. Spalding is the editor of SoMAreview.comand the author of A Pilgrim’s Digress: My Perilous, Fumbling Quest for the Celestial City.