Why did eugenics organizations change their names after World War II?

Following the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, which utilized eugenics to justify the systematic murder of Jewish and other non-Aryan populations, the field of eugenics became deeply stigmatized. During the post-World War II era, what was once hailed as a legitimate science was increasingly denounced as a failed pseudoscience.12

To distance themselves from these associations, many organizations and publications removed the term "eugenics" from their names in favor of less controversial terminology. Examples of this shift include:1

• In 1954, Britain’s Annals of Eugenics was renamed Annals of Human Genetics.1
• In 1969, the Eugenics Quarterly was renamed Social Biology.1
• In 1972, the American Eugenics Society adopted the name Society for the Study of Social Biology.1

This rebranding reflected a broader societal rejection of the movement's past practices, such as involuntary sterilization, which were later exposed as human rights abuses.13