Contrary of "As its/their name indicates"

Question

In English we sometimes use the expression "As its/their name indicates" to express the fact that the name of a concept/object/etc. bears part of its meaning, e.g.:

As their name indicates, supernovae are discovered in the sky as “new stars” (-novae) of exceptionally high brightness (super-).

How would you say in a similar fashion that the name is a misnomer?

For example:

We are going to use logistic regression, which as its name does not indicate is a classification model.

I would like to replace "which as its name does not indicate" by some expression that underlines the fact that the name is a misnomer, not just uninformative.

Answer 1

I would use despite:

We are going to use logistic regression, which, despite its name, is a classification model.

Answer 2

I would put it thus:

We are going to use logistic regression, which is, quite contrary to what its name suggests, a classification model.

Or we could use the word counterintuitive:

We are going to use logistic regression, which is a counterintuitive name for what is in fact a classification model.

In place of counterintuitive, one could also use the adjectives misleading and unlikely.

Or:

We are going to use logistic regression, which is a classification model, as its name fails to indicate.

We are going to use logistic regression, which is a classification model actually, although its name fails to put that across.

In place of fails, one could place neglects.

Answer 3

I like CopperKettle's suggestions. I think I would write it like this myself:

We are going to use logistic regression, which unlike its name suggests, is actually a classification model.

Answer 4

It seems to me that the problem with most of these suggestions is that the term "logistic regression" does not have an evident surface meaning at all, and in that sense is not obviously problematic. I would say something like: "We will look at a statistical technique which predicts whether an individual has some property or not and which is known, a bit obscurely, as logistic regression"

Answer 5

We are going to use the { ill-named | poorly named | ineptly named ... } logistic regression, which is actually a classification model.

Here, bold mark the words that work together to express the speaker's opinion about the name. Italics indicate the spoken emphasis: in a contrastive sentence, the elements being compared are stressed. Here, from the emphasis we know that "regression" is being held against "classification" (and not, say, "model"), which is important.

In place of "ill-named" or "poorly named", we can use "so-called", which is less boldly critical of the naming, yet still calls the naming into question, or at least calls attention to it.

Answer 6

There is a word that means exactly this:

heterological
(grammar) Of an adjective, not describing itself.

It's constructed as the logical counterpart/antonym of autological, "a word expressing a property which it also possesses itself."

However, this is a pretty rare word, and not all dictionaries list it. So in actual practice, you're better off using some derivative of "contrary".

We are going to use logistic regression, which, contrary to what its name indicates, is a classification model.

We are going to use the self-contradictorily named "logistic regression", which is a classification model.

Answer 7

I would omit needless words and let the facts speak for themselves:

We are going to use logistic regression, a classification model.

or,

We are going to use logistic regression as our classification model.