What's in a name?

If it's Kinki University, probably more than was intended.

Which is why the school has finally decided to change it.

Kinki University, a prestigious institution of higher learning located in the Kinki area of western Japan that includes the major industrial city of Osaka, said this week it would change its official English name to Kindai University because of the undesirable connotations its current name suggests to English speakers.

The name "can sound like 'kinky,' and we have continuously discussed changing it," the university said in a statement released Tuesday. The change will take effect in April 2016 to accompany the opening of a new international studies faculty.

Kindai, the name by which the school is known in Japanese, combines Kinki and "daigaku," or university.

A spokeswoman for the university said all official English references will be changed, including the name of its English student newspaper, the Kinki Times.

This will take place as the school seeks to build its international reputation and become the top private university in western Japan, its dean, Hitoshi Shiozaki, said in the release.

"We've taken into consideration our plans to expand admission of exchange students, and to not cause any obstacle for them," the statement said.

Many other organizations in the region, however, are keeping the Kinki name. These include Kinki Osaka Bank Ltd., Kinki Taxi Corp., Kinki Nippon Tourist Co. and Kinki Industrial Co. Others have made modifications, including the railway company Kinki Nihon Tetsudo, which goes by Kintetsu Corp. in English.

Kinki University was established in 1949 from the merger of a technical college and a science and engineering university. It is one of the biggest universities in western Japan, with 13 faculties, 11 graduate schools and over 30,000 students. It recently made headlines by opening two restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka that serve Pacific bluefin tuna, which the school helped farm-raise.