Naming and trademarks

From official products and components to internal teams and programs, we create a lot of names. Promoting too many unique brand names, logos, or messages creates confusion and can result in a loss of mindshare and awareness for our brand.

In order to amplify and unify our voice, we prioritize building the Red Hat® brand first and use descriptive language to clearly explain what our names represent. It’s also important to protect our trademarks and respect the trademarks of others. New names must be approved by the Naming and Legal teams before use.

Learn more about the naming process Reference the official product list (Red Hat credentials required) Red Hat trademark guidelines and policies

Descriptive naming

Our approach to naming is to say what it is and explain what it does. This strategy helps us to be clear about our offerings, making documentation, navigation, searching—and ultimately purchasing—easier.

Offerings

A diagram shows 3 product names: Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform, Red Hat® Developer Hub, and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®. The individual pieces of the names are highlighted: the parent brand (Red Hat), the descriptive product name, and any descriptors.

Platform and product names
Platform and product names always start with “Red Hat,” followed by a name that describes what the offering does, typed in title case.

Always use the full name on the first use, and only use approved abbreviations or acronyms when necessary. Reference the official product list to be sure you're using the correct name and stylization.

A diagram shows 3 components names: “automation mesh,” “dependency analytics,” and “Red Hat build of Quarkus.”

Component names
Components are features, plug-ins, operators, builds, and other technologies that are part of or used alongside our products and platforms.

The goal of component names is to clearly describe what they do and make it clear that they are not purchasable individually. They’re typed in sentence case and only include “Red Hat” if necessary to describe their relationship to an offering. Reference the official product list to be sure you're using the correct name and stylization.

Other names

A diagram shows 3 names: Red Hat Asian Network, Red Hat Manager Day, and Red Hat User Group Community. The individual pieces of the names are highlighted: the parent brand (Red Hat), the descriptive name, and any descriptors.

Event, program, and initiative names
Events, programs, and initiatives engage with Red Hat employees, communities, partners, and customers in unique ways. Like other Red Hat groups, their name always starts with Red Hat followed by a descriptive name.

Their names always start with “Red Hat,” followed by a descriptive name that makes their association with Red Hat clear.

A diagram shows 3 names: Red Hat Customer Service Team, Red Hat Data Quality Tool, and Red Hat Resource Management Office. The individual pieces of the names are highlighted: the parent brand (Red Hat), the descriptive name, and any descriptors.

Internal team and tool names
Nothing is internal only, so internal team and tool names still follow our naming conventions. They start with “Red Hat,” followed by a professional, customer-facing name. They also end with a descriptor like “office” or “dashboard” to make their function in the organization clear.

Referring to Red Hat

The Red Hat trademark is always written as two separate, capitalized words. Always use the same typeface for “Red Hat”’ that you use for the rest of the text, and keep both words on the same line whenever possible. We do not translate “Red Hat” into other languages.*

A registered trademark symbol (®) should be used after the first use of “Red Hat” as an adjective in body copy (e.g., “Try a Red Hat® product today”). We do not add a registered trademark symbol after “Red Hat” when referring to the company itself (e.g., “Red Hat is an open source company”).

“Red Hat” typed as two words in title case.

Type Red Hat as two separate, capitalized words.

Image showing misuse: Examples of “Red Hat” being mispelled, combined into one word, and typed in all lowercase.

Do not combine Red Hat into one word or use the words in lowercase.

A paragraph of example text where the words “Red Hat” are on the same line.

Whenever possible, keep the words “Red Hat” on the same line of text.

Image showing misuse: A paragraph of example text where the words “Red Hat” are split across two lines.

Avoid splitting the words "Red Hat" across two lines of text.

Two lines of example text in Japanese and German where “Red Hat” is in English, typed in Latin characters.

Regardless of the language of the content, refer to Red Hat in English, in Latin characters.*

Image showing misuse: Two lines of example text in Japanese and German where the words “red hat” have been translated.

Don’t translate “Red Hat” into another language, even when the rest of the text is not in Latin characters.*

*As an exception, Red Hat is translated to 红帽 in Simplified Chinese.

Product names and trademark usage

When referring to Red Hat products, always use the full name of the product and appropriate trademark symbols the first time the product is mentioned in body copy. After the first use, you can use approved short names.

The following is a short list of the most frequently used trademarks. We have other trademarks, and the names of our platforms, products, and components may change. For the most up-to-date information, Red Hatters should reference the official product list and Copyright Notices and Trademark Legends. Partners should contact their partner account manager or reach out to partner-help@redhat.com with any questions.

Platform name with appropriate trademark symbolsApproved short names (only after use of the full name)Do not use

Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform

Ansible Automation PlatformAnsible, Red Hat Ansible, Ansible Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation, RHAAP, AAP

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 1

RHELEnterprise Linux, Linux, EL

Red Hat® OpenShift®

--OpenShift, RHOS, OS

Other trademarks

The following trademarks also require a registered trademark symbol when used in Red Hat product names:

Ceph®

Gluster®

Hibernate®

JBoss®

OpenStack® 2

1 Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
2 The OPENSTACK logo and word mark are trademarks or registered trademarks of OpenInfra Foundation, used under license.

Copyright and boilerplate

Every web page and the last page of documents should have a copyright notice and trademark attribution in the footer. The boilerplate wording is specific to the number of trademark entities on the page. Start with a basic boilerplate (© 2024 Red Hat, Inc.) and customize it with the specific information about trademark attributions necessary.

Trademark guidelines and policies Copyright boilerplate guidance

Questions?

Red Hat partners with questions about how to articulate their partnership with Red Hat can contact partner-help@redhat.com.

Red Hat associates can view the Naming page on The Source (Red Hat credentials required) or contact their marketing account manager.