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I just learned from another question about a short story by Mark Twain entitled "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which, when I looked it up online to find a copy-pastable version, turned out to be called "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Curious, I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that it's been published under both these titles and also as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog". The Wikipedia page has some information about where and when it was published under which title, but nothing about why.

Why was the title of this story changed, at least twice?

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  • Not sure why the title was changed, other than Twain simply thinking the later title was a better one when he revamped or re-issued the story. In the original version ("Jim Smiley"), he calls the town where the incident takes place "Boomerang," whereas later (in "Celebrated...Calaveras") he uses its real name ("Angels" (short for Angels Camp)).
    – B. Clay Shannon-B. Crow Raven
    Aug 13, 2020 at 15:21
  • @B.ClayShannon-B.CrowRaven Do you know that Twain himself chose the new titles, or at least approved of them? It's not uncommon for editors to select new titles themselves for publication. (Asimov bemoaned this on many occasions, and usually reinstated his original titles when stories were reprinted in his own collections.)
    – gidds
    Oct 11, 2022 at 23:07

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