Unclear the reason to change…
SAFE and/or Safe Network… and all mutations are welcome.
The worst rebranding without reason I saw was MasterCoin move to Omni.
yes, but there are also good rebranding examples. Dash for example, great name now
“safe” is about as good an association as can be.
For sure not everyone likes mnemonics but change for changes sake loses more than it gains. A move to Safe is fine but the likes of Safen seem odd.
Dash … and other new words, are a cold start.
Also, it’s a kind of issue that’s only as important as marketing… the product and utility is key… a rose smells as sweet etc.
Edit: the exception would be Babel… which I’d vote for because of Jorge Luis Borges: Library of Babel … which is a good description for Xor space.
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I’m not sure if I can technically change the existing poll without resetting it … and even if I could, some people might feel that changing the poll at this point might be manipulative.
I have a sense (and may be wrong) that the team is keen to keep the name within a close range to what they’ve been using as well … and ultimately it is their decision. I took the existing poll choices from the discussion in the last dev update (which has been moved to this thread).
I’m sure there are many good possible names though … I could create a new poll after this one closes if enough people are really keen on that, but if this drags on for a while it’ll probably be frustrating for everyone, so I am mixed about the idea. However, if a lot of people in this thread discuss it and overall think it’s a good idea, then I’m happy to do it.
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I‘d go for SAFE option. I like it cause it is simple, clean and each letter is part of the project’s motto: “Secure Access For Everyone”
Then, once it will start to gain audience, it will be understood to be a network.
Thus, the question is: there’s a real need to underline into the name that it is a network (i.e. in the SafeNetwork and Safe Network options)?
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Well, my girlfriend is half German, so I asked her.
I said Safe Network or SafeNetwork, without trying to prejudice it at all.
She’s well aware of the project, and brought up most of the points that have already been raised here, on both sides, and concluded it should be SAFE… 
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I always use snake case for file and folder names, but that is for scripting reasons. Natural language is different.
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Just a wee reminder, incase anyone missed it, the explanation for why we are promoting the use of Safe rather than SAFE is in last week’s dev update. It’s not a re-brand (does anyone have the appetite for that right now?), it’s still an acronym (and both a noun and an adjective 
), and we’ll still promote the strapline “Secure Access For Everyone”.
When it comes to the subject of changing the brand, or enhancing it, or making it more ‘ownable’, and ‘less generic’, I think it’s worthwhile considering if that’s what we really want?
The Network, by its very design, will be owned by everyone, and controlled by no-one. It’s a platform that we want people to build a myriad of business and brands on-top of, and for people to feel secure in entrusting their personal data to.
People should consider it infrastructure, a utility, a globally accessible common resource, in the same way the internet, or the World Wide Web is. In that regard,
I’d argue it is desirable—and powerful—to have an unprotectable name, and for it not to feel like a brand, a tech company, or a new app.
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tough one. ‘Safe Network’ is not really brandable, but also not really generic IMO, it’s something in between is my feeling.
If you are looking for a generic term like ‘internet’ is now. Then you should keep it simple and just describe what it is. A network of vaults. So ‘vaultnet’ comes closest in that regard
SafeCloud ?
I then googled this idea… and found this…
https://www.safecloud-project.eu/results/deliverables.html
I stopped reading when one of their backbones of security is port knocking!! 
Maidsafe is going to make the network this EU project is designing for redundant.
Maidsafe put the EU to shame! The SAFENetwork project blows the above project out of the water. It looks like the EU like the idea of Safe Access For Everyone, they are just backing the wrong horse.
Can we use safecloud?
Can we get an EU grant?
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Sadly, but hopefully only temporarily, we are in the wrong jurisdiction for that.
But rejoice, our bangers can be as bendy as they want and our chicken can be chlorinated, so on the whole, its all OK.
The answer to both of those questions is… nope!
It’s funny though, the GDPR makes mention—really just pays lip service to—portable data as an ideal, with no real grasp of how it would be attainable with current technology, nor with current business models and practices .
Yet we are building the thing that will actually make it possible yet have been turned down for EU funding twice. 
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Best to be independent and free of gov. funding and it’s strings. I believe the community support for Maidsafe is strong and will be there if more is needed down the track.
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That’s useful clarification as it seems you were looking for a brand.
Is it safe?.. and the default, is known… follows from our current useage… and just a normalising of SAFE to Safe or even safe, which is simple.
This all seems a distraction from more important issues… and the spread of answers perhaps reflecting that the name doesn’t matter unless you’re needing a brand for marketing.
To draw back a little, the other flipslip is to avoid future confusion with any copycat. We need to be clear that the original and best is obvious to everyone.
An EU project will come along soon after launch that claims to store data securely, they will write a dapp on the SAFENetwork and then claim success - then laugh all the way to the bank with their EUR Million grant! All the while you guys did the real work.
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Yeah, I think the title of the poll is a smidgen misleading, as we weren’t suggesting we need to re-brand, just more that we feel free to me more relaxed around the initialisation of the acronym, and that using more natural language is advantageous, more ergonomic, and less intimidating etc.
Of course, some folk might think we do need to rebrand, and I don’t want to piss on that bonfire, but it wasn’t a specific proposal. 
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I wouldn’t entertain the thought of rebranding. So many here have spent so much time and money promoting this project as the safe network and this isn’t 2017 where rebranding somehow was seen as a plus to get you more gains (which in reality was probably just a double dipping tactic for people investing in anything new).
Plus as @JimCollinson said, Safe is specific but not super brand like which as a universal and ubiquitous utility is something you want and to abandon such a brilliant acronym would be silly to start.
Then there would be those who scream scam.
Not worth it at all, imo.
As much as I like SAFE Network or SAFEnetwork I understand and accept the change. I think I prefer Safe Network myself with the new options just because of the natural language argument. It’s what grandma will type and understand regardless if we get the same results in search as with no space.
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and it’s not beyond the wit of man to understand that SafeNetwork is the same.
I wonder the sum of above all resolve to that “Safe” is the core element and that it is a network is worth noting. Use as fits context.
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I think the best you can do is probably something like “SAIF”. People who already know about you will be able to tie that to both “MaidSafe” and “Safe Network”, so they’ll have at least a chance of figuring out what it means. And it gets you out of the hole you’ve dug with “Safe Network”.
Yes, it is a hole; it was an absolutely awful choice for a name.
For some reason, it’s really common in the cryptocurrency-decentralization-whatever idea cluster for projects to try to colonize generic language, like “safe network”. Outside of the bubble, that attitude is just going to make a bunch of people hostile. It makes you look clueless and full of yourselves, not ground-breaking and revolutionary.
Using a generic phrase with heavy emphasis on the word “safe” also makes you sound like you’re running a con, are nervous about people noticing it, and feel you have to grasp at reassuring words. That’s especially true in the context of all your promotional material. Remember, no matter how much you believe you’re going to change the world, everybody else has heard that a million times, and the more you hype it, the less anybody will believe you.
Taking it up a notch to “The Safe Network” only adds “pompous” to the list of first impressions.
As for discoverability, a lot of people aren’t even going to bother to run a search for something like “Safe Network”, because they’ll assume they’ll get mostly irrelevant results.
Running it together into “SafeNetwork” (with or without internal capitalization) avoids some of the colonization issues, and makes it more discoverable, but it’s long and clunky, still a lousy name, and it will almost certainly sink you on the shoals of the “SafeNet” trademark. In the trademark world, you can get away with “safe network”, with the space, because it’s generic.
Shortening it to SAFE is better as a name, because the all-caps makes it clear that you’re not trying to grab a chunk of the shared language, and at least leaves the possibility open that you’re not trying to claim to be the only “safe” thing out there. But of course there have already been roughtly a billion things called “SAFE” in all caps. And searchability goes out the window.
What should have happened was that the software/network should have kept the far from perfect, but at least memorable, more or less meaningful, and already somewhat promoted, name “Maidsafe”. The company should have been given some forgettable name like “Safer Networks Development LLC”. Unfortunately it was done backwards.
At this point, I think you should probably cut your losses on “Safe Network”. If you don’t feel you can wiggle out with “SAIF” or some hack like that, then pick a completely different name.