> AFAIK at least one of the reasons (probably the biggest reason) to the renaming of the
> browser Odyssey (06-Aug-2011) was to avoid the confusion with "the other" OWB's.

That would mean Fab's choice of "Odyssey" was quite poor as that didn't change the abbreviation "OWB" one bit. I remember that Fab said he wanted the abbreviation to stay the same (as opposed to what you seem to remember), hence the choice of another word beginning with "O", and that he wanted to distance his project from the "Origyn" name, not from the "OWB" name.

> "Origyn" was effectively no longer present (at least not in a significant way) in Fab's
> browser, even *long before* the actual name change (for all I know, this could very
> well be true for the v1.9 (ported to OS4) and earlier as well)! [...] So while there wasn't
> any "Origyn" left in Fab's browser, people would still mix it up with OWB (as in Origyn
> Web Browser) because of the name.

v1.9 was indeed the first version using WebKit directly, but you can't hold them responsible for Fab's apparently poor name choice, can you? Fab chose to name his browser "Origyn Web Browser" up to v1.13 and "Odyssey Web Browser" for v1.14 and above. And it was also Fab's choice that the new name had no impact on the abbreviation. Now go put name and shame on the one responsible for the confusion :-)

> The unofficial "MUI prefix" (i.e. "MUI-OWB", or "MOS-OWB" or "MorphOS OWB" or
> "OWB for MorphOS" for that matter) never really helped

I think it does help distinguishing Fab's Origyn Web Browser v1.9 from the other OWBs, e.g. Reaction-based Origyn Web Browser or the AROS Oxygen Web Browser.

> and suggests that the only/main difference would be a Reaction vs. MUI GUI,
> or an OS4 build vs. a MorphOS build, that it's basically the same good old OWB,
> totally hiding/neglecting the fundamental differences between them, that they
> are two entirely different programs.

That's much more suggested by the very same name "Origyn Web Browser" for Fab's browser up to v1.13 and the Reaction-based browser. You can't be seriously thinking that the "MUI" prefix is responsible for this.

> Calling the browser Odyssey (as I thought was its official name since 06-Aug-2011),
> plain and simple, nothing more, nothing less, would easily have cleared up any confusion.
> Also when talking about the existing version or potential new versions of it on OS4.

The "Odyssey" name was introduced with v1.14, so it should be clear that v1.9 isn't Odyssey but still called "Origyn". Fab clearly didn't rename his older releases subsequently. If you download Fab's v1.13 or older today, you can see that it is still called "Origyn Web Browser". And btw, the "About" window for v1.14 and newer reads "Odyssey Web Browser" as the official name, not just "Odyssey", that's why the "OWB" abbreviation is still valid, and deliberately so.

> IMHO it doesn't help that even Fab himself seems to prefer calling it OWB.

It's telling that you are able to see that but still manage to declare others (them?) responsible for calling it "OWB".

> In a way it makes me wonder why he bothered with a name change in the first place,
> when apparently the only change he had in mind was going from one "O" to another
> "O" before the trailing "WB" and letting the confusion and mixups continue? Seems like
> it was nothing more than a bad joke, some kind of play with words?

I suggest you to ask him directly about this.

> I can easily live with the OWB name as well, I don't really mind.

Yes, obviously ;-)