Rydex Investments is rechristening 18 of its funds to better reflect their investment strategy.

The new naming system, which will take effect on May 1, will apply primarily to the Rockville, Maryland-based firm's benchmarked, leveraged and index funds, some of which are sporting Greek and Latin names.

Rydex said the changes are designed to identify the index or type of index to which a fund is benchmarked, and indicate the inverse exposure and amount of leverage used. The changes will not have an effect on the management, investment objective and strategy of the funds.

The use of "advantage" in the fund's name indicates that the leverage amount is less than two times the index, while the use of "dynamic" indicates that the leverage amount is two times the index.

The Rydex Titan 500 Fund, for instance, which seeks returns that are twice those of the S&P 500 Index, will be renamed Rydex Dynamic S&P 500 Fund. The Rydex Juno Fund, which seeks to return the inverse of the daily price movement of the current long Treasury bond, will take on the name Rydex Inverse Government Long Bond.

"Rydex is well known for our specialized investment products and our funds' unique names were drawn from the Greek and Latin languages," said Carl Verboncoeur, chief executive of Rydex. "However, after speaking with advisors and investors, we learned that they find it difficult to connect the unique fund name with its investment approach."

One fund, however, will be excluded from the rechristening. Rydex said it is not altering the name of the Rydex Nova Fund as a testimony to the firm's late founder, Skip Viragh, who launched Rydex Investments with that fund in 1993. 

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