Yale College in Wrexham, a further education college, is being forced to change its name by its American namesake, Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ.

The college, named Yale since 1972, submitted after a threat of legal action last March.

Prinicipal Emlyn R. Jones said: "We were more or less accused of potential trademark violation and of passing off Yale College as Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ.

"The governors felt extremely threatened and intimidated, we were advised by intellectual property lawyers to take a commercial view and avoid costly litigation, if possible."

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If governors agree, later this year Yale College will become Yale College of Wrexham and will include "wrexham" in its web address, which is currently

A spokesperson for Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ in New Haven, Connecticut, said: "If there is another academic institution named Yale it raises the strong possibility that some people will wrongly assume a connection to the 300-year-old Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ."

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Mr Jones thinks Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ might have been looking to protect future interests in e-commerce and e-education.

His staff were amused to discover that Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ had felt it necessary to be "intimidating" to their college, which has 3,500 full-time students aged 16 to 19 - mainly from the local area - and which does not award degrees. Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, by contrast, has over 7,000 members of staff, 10,000 full-time students, and in 1998 held $6.6 billion in endowment assets.

But there is a connection. Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ is named after benefactor Elihu Yale, who lived and is buried in Wrexham. Yale College took its name from "indigenous association", possibly a derivation of the Welsh name for the area "Ial" or possibly after Elihu Yale himself.

Yale 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ modelled one of its towers on the Wrexham church where Elihu Yale is buried. It says it discovered its namesake in 1998 when a member of staff visited Wales.

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Mr Jones said: "It is a bit sad. Instead of celebrating our commonality we find ourselves in a fractious situation."