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You see this in marketing sometimes, where a product or company with an acronym name later comes up with a phrase that fits the acronym for an ad campaign or a related product.

For example, if your company name is QP, after the founder Quincy Peterson, your marketing department might make a "Quality Products" campaign. Or they might name the new adhesive product "Quick Plastic."

Is there a word or phrase that describes this?

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This is called a backronym or bacronym:

A backronym, or bacronym, is a constructed phrase that purports to be the source of a word that is an acronym.

(source: Wikipedia)

They give the AMBER Alert as an example; it was named after a girl whose name was Amber, but constructed the phrase "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response" to fit the abbreviation.

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  • I don't think I disagree with your answer, but you might want to include a little more information. The process which you've described whereby the non-acronym "Amber" was turned into an acronym ("Amber Alert" -> "A.M.B.E.R. Alert") seems quite different from the process of redefining the meaning of an existing acronym ("Quincy Peterson" -> "Quality Products"). However, it may be the case that "backronym" is the word used to describe both making an acronym from and non-acronym and redefining an existing acronym.
    – Juhasz
    Dec 11, 2018 at 18:02

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