Why George Mason tweaked Scalia law school name

It's the thought that counts, right?

A week after George Mason University renamed its law school to honor the recently departed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the Virginia public institution is calling for a slight do-over.

“The Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University,” the Twitterverse quickly spotted, didn’t make for a good acronym.

And the hits kept coming.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal first reported that the law school decided to punt the preposition in marketing materials and on its website.

“The Antonin Scalia School of Law — has caused some acronym controversy on social media,” law school Dean Henry N. Butler wrote in an email to students and alumni. “The Antonin Scalia Law School is a logical substitute.”

Scalia, remembered as a tart-tongued champion of conservative interpretation of the Constitution, died on Feb. 13 at a West Texas ranch resort. Scalia, 79, was the court’s longest-serving justice and its first Italian-American member. President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland, the chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to fill the vacancy on the court.

George Mason unveiled the original name change on March 31 in conjunction with an announcement that it had received two school-record donations totaling $30 million.

Slideshow: Justice Antonin Scalia — A look back >>>

The school said one gift, a $20 million pledge, came through an anonymous donor who approached Leonard A. Leo of the Federalist Society, a close friend of Scalia and his family. The anonymous donor requested that the university name the law school in honor of the justice.

The tweaking of the name doesn’t jeopardize the gift, the dean explained in his email.

“Under the terms of the anonymous gift, we are authorized to use a variety of different names,” he wrote.

Jason Sickles is a national reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles).