The branding of the next major Windows 10 update, due in around September this year, was announced in May as the Fall Creators Update. Our UK siblings immediately wondered if the update would retain that same name in the UK. While American English calls the season between summer and winter "fall," most of the rest of the anglophone community uses the British English "autumn."

At the time of the initial announcement, Microsoft said that it would use the "Fall" name universally. But now that appears to not be the case; spotted by Windows Central, the branding being used in the UK and other English-speaking countries such as India, is now the Autumn Creators Update. In the US and Canada, it will remain the Fall Creators Update.

Given that the name was already inelegant, we find ourselves wondering if Microsoft would be better off abandoning this branding entirely. For the most part, Windows itself does not use this type of branding. Although Windows Update referred to the "Creators Update," for example, everywhere else in the operating system it simply calls it Version 1703 (which is to say, the Windows version from the third month of 2017). Windows Server, which will soon receive updates in parallel with Windows 10, similarly doesn't use this type of branding; it just uses the version number.

The Fall/Autumn Creators Update is intended to be finalized in September this year and as such will be Version 1709. Numbered versions may not be quite as catchy as the branded names, but we feel that they represent the better option long-term. Coming up with two names a year is clearly stretching Microsoft's creativity—"Fall Creators Update" as a successor to "Creators Update" does not feel very inspired—is raising silly localization issues, and is in any case unhelpful. There's no easy way to tell if a system has the "Creators Update" installed, because nothing in Windows uses the name. By contrast, it's easy to know that Version 1703 is installed because Windows' System properties and the winver program both tell you that it is.

Failing that, perhaps Microsoft could use names that are more abstract and not tied to any particular features or times of year. The names of big cats, or possibly even regions of California, come to mind as good candidates.