Sierra Bravo Corporation said Monday that it has changed its name to The Nerdery-a name that its leaders believe is a more accurate representation of what it does.

Over the past year, the Bloomington-based Web development and design firm associated itself with both names. But the company plans to drop its original name, Sierra Bravo Corporation, which dates back to 2003 when it was founded by Luke Bucklin, Mike Derheim, and Mike Schmidt.

“Back when Luke piloted his plane to our yet-unnamed company's first client meeting, he and I brainstormed rather hastily to come up with a name-any name to tell our potential client,” Schmidt, the company's senior vice president of software development, said in a recent memo to Nerdery staff. “The name 'Sierra Bravo' was literally pulled from thin air by applying aviation-alphabet lingo to our last-name initials (with all apologies for omitting Mike 'Delta' Derheim for the sake of brevity).”

In addition to changing its name, The Nerdery also said Monday that it has launched a new business initiative called “The N Corps”-which is dedicated to working with IT and operations staff at client companies to engineer custom Web and mobile software solutions. Those solutions are designed to solve real-world business problems through process automation and systems integration.

“The N Corps is not a separate company from The Nerdery. It's a sub-brand designed to take the company back to the same market whose doors we started knocking on in 2003,” Nerdery CEO Mike Derheim said in a statement. “Back then, our company's niche was helping clients solve tactical business problems by combining traditional enterprise software with Web technology.”

The Nerdery said that its name change was scheduled to be announced two weeks ago by Luke Bucklin, who died on October 25-along with three sons-in the Wyoming mountains after the small plane that he was piloting lost contact with ground control amid a snowstorm. Following news of Bucklin's death, the company announced that CFO Mike Derheim would step into Bucklin's position as CEO.

The Nerdery is among Minnesota's eight-largest Web development and design firms based on Web revenue, which totaled $8.6 million during its most recent fiscal year. It has a second office in Chicago and employs almost 170 people.