U.S. officials, particularly the agricultural department, were under pressure from the pork lobby that fears the term "swine flu" is confusing people into thinking they can catch the virus from pork, which they can't, the AP says.

Or as Pork News explains, the government believes that the term swine flu "might be catchy, but it's not accurate."

Israeli officials have also weighed in. This week, deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, who belongs to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, suggested renaming swine flu as "Mexican flu," saying that the reference to pigs is offensive to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, The Guardian reports.

That, to no one's surprise, did not please the Mexican government, which quickly registered an official complaint, prompting Israel to back down.

Although Mexico has reported the biggest outbreak, the AP says that no one really knows where the virus began. The news agency notes that the infamous 1918 pandemic was first called the "Spanish flu," although it may well have started in Kansas.

So the U.S. government is now officially going with "H1N1" even though the bureaucracy is finding it hard to shake the old "swine flu" label.

Here's what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling its website for the latest information on the virus: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu. Source.