EIGHT names were shortlisted for the £26 million Bristol M Shed – but only one of them actually contained the word "museum".

The Evening Post can reveal the names that were considered by Bristol City Council for its flagship Harbourside project.

They were

● M Shed

● Shed M

● The Transit Shed;

● Transit Shed;

● The Storehouse;

● The Storehouse Museum;

● Bristol Storehouse and

● The Bristol Storehouse.

Council staff came up with the shortlist and then consultants Morris Hargreaves McIntyre were paid £2,000 to carry out a consultation exercise on names for the Harbourside project and the City Museum & Art Gallery in Queen's Road.

The council had originally planned on calling M Shed the Museum of Bristol but found during research that people already referred to the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery as Bristol Museum or something similar.

The council decided the easier option was to come up with a new name for the new harbourside project.

The Post revealed M Shed was the chosen name last October, after the authority decided against a high-profile campaign to help pick the name.

Potential names were not debated in local newspapers, radio or television and the decision on what will be a major project for the authority was not brought to either the cabinet or the full council.

Instead the names were tested through the consultants, a council-invited audience focus group and the project's Public Advisory Group.

This group includes Sue Thurlow and Mary Bailey of Friends of Bristol's Museums, local architect and historian Andy Foyle, Peter Courtier; Eugene Byrne of Venue magazine, Steve Humphries of Testimony Films, Peter Lord of Aardman Animations and UWE academics Peter Flemming and Madge Dresser.

Consultants Morris Hargreaves McIntyre tested the names with a group of 110 people intended to be representative of the whole city in an online "ePanel".

They were paid a total of £100 as an incentive to give their views on the shortlist in a questionnaire.

The council said the money was paid due to concerns that otherwise only people already connected with the museum would respond.

The authority wants M Shed to attract people who would not normally go to museums.

According to a report by the consultants, the M Shed name was praised because "it is seen as both contemporary and traditional, appealing to the iPod generation as much as to those who can remember the original working M Shed".

But there were also concerns about whether anyone would realise that it was a museum.

One participant said: "Unless you understand the relevance of the building previously being called M Shed it wouldn't make sense, and you wouldn't know what the museum was about".

A council spokesman said: "A range of options for the name were brainstormed by a number of different staff working in different groups on the project.

"The name that came out as a clear favourite was M Shed.

"However the research also flagged up that not having the word Museum in the name might cause some problems.

"This has been taken on board with the development of a strap line that makes it clear what M Shed is about and which will be used alongside the name until it become more widely recognised.

"Whilst we value a positive relationship with the Evening Post and its readers, the Evening Post readership is not necessarily fully representative of the Bristol population, and we have a duty to ensure that our audience testing is," the spokesman added.

"This is why we have carried out audience research based on census information, using more robust audience testing methodologies."