The WWF officially changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, in 2002.
The company announced the change in May 2002 after a legal dispute with the World Wide Fund for Nature, which also used the initials WWF. The entertainment company had previously used WWF as its corporate and promotional name for decades.
The rebranding affected television graphics, merchandise, legal documents, and the company’s public identity. The wrestling promotion continued operating under the same ownership and retained its major weekly shows and pay-per-view events.
A common confusion is that WWE began as a completely new promotion in 2002. It did not. The company was the same organization that had previously been known as the World Wrestling Federation. The name change followed WWF’s purchase of WCW and ECW assets in 2001, but those acquisitions were separate from the legal rebranding.