Belgian chocolate company ISIS is changing its name

(Image credit: Facebook/Tonkeys)

last updated 8 January 2015

When you hear about ISIS, chocolate probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind — and for one Belgian company, that's a huge problem.

Not only is ISIS the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a brutally deadly extremist group — it's also the name of a Belgian chocolatier. The ISIS chocolate brand, founded in 1923, was apparently named after Italy and Switzerland, where its founder learned to make chocolate. The company just changed its name last year from Italo Suisse to ISIS. Unfortunately, it now has to change its name again, thanks to the popularity of the terrorist group.

Reuters reports that customers are souring on the brand, thanks to recent headlines about ISIS militants. "We chose ISIS as that was the brand name of our pralines and tablets," Desiree Libeert, the company's marketing manager, told Reuters. "Had we known there was a terrorist organization with the same name, we would have never chosen that. We had international customers saying that they could no longer stock our chocolate, as consumers had only negative associations with the name."