The Name: Fort Wayne Zoo, from 1 January 2025

Announced 10 December 2024 — effective 1 January 2025

The course of the name: The institution planned as the Franke Park Zoo opened in 1965 as the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo and carried that name for sixty seasons — through the Veldt, Australia, the rain forest, the Journey and the Trek. On 10 December 2024, Executive Director Rick Schuiteman announced that from 1 January 2025 the zoo would be known as the Fort Wayne Zoo. The change took effect on New Year's Day 2025, and the sixtieth season was the first under the shorter name.

The reason, in the zoo's words: "This new name will better reflect who we are and what we do, and our mission won't change," Schuiteman said in the announcement. "This name change will also help widen our audience, engage more people in our mission, our conservation efforts, and our future growth. We are more than a zoo for children. We are a zoo for all." The mission statement itself did not change — "Connecting kids and animals, strengthening families and inspiring people to care" — and zoo leaders assured the public, in the Journal Gazette's headline phrase, that it would remain "the same zoo that everybody loves." The Charities section of this record noted the change in the society's entry in the same terms: the institution renamed itself the Fort Wayne Zoo at the start of 2025.

Sources:

1. Journal Gazette, "Fort Wayne Children's Zoo to go by new name starting in January," 10 December 2024 (the announcement and effective date).
2. Taylor Williams, "Fort Wayne Children's Zoo to remain 'the same zoo that everybody loves' following name change, leaders say," 21Alive News, 11 December 2024.
3. Fort Wayne Zoo, "Name is not only change you'll see at zoo," Whatzup, March 2025 (Schuiteman's announcement language, quoted; the unchanged mission).