> The Linux Foundation protects the public and Linux users from unauthorized and confusing uses of the trademark and authorizes proper uses of the mark through an accessible sublicensing program.
Before that, it was Kool Desktop Environment.
Some German FOSS developer somewhere thought "Kool" was cooler than "Cool", which tells you how cool KDE and its design are. (Hint: they aren't.)
They dropped that very early on for just KDE.
I personally don't like it when commercial companies try to tell me what I may or may not call their products, but when a bunch of volunteers continually get all arsey about their name and bleat and moan about "calling it the right name" when I remember the real name better than they do themselves, frankly, it puts me off using the entire software suite.
I would guess others feel similarly.
If the KDE volunteers want people to adopt and use and favour KDE, then IMHO they should try a new tactic:
Stop whining about what people call it.