When my team got a black developer I realized that it’s slightly awkward to say the word ‘master branch’. I understand that git was made by a Finish developer,

When my team got a black developer I realized that it’s slightly awkward to say the word ‘master branch’. I understand that git was made by a Finish developer, but in the historical context of the US any allusion to slavery can be problematic because it implies disregard for some people. Imposter syndrome is a big issue with developers, I certainly don’t want to add to that with any extra hints of ‘you don’t belong here.’ I would much rather use the word ‘primary’ for the central branch. I can certainly change that. But our repos are maintained by a dedicated configuration management department in consultation with a quality department. Any change requires meetings and lots of questions by lots of people. When we have 50 other priorities with dollar values attached to them, this type of thing is ranked very low. Plus we would be the only team to do that, we’d stick out like a sore thumb and future merges to primary would require special instruction for our support departments. I welcome an industry wide shift away from these terms. Although I have no evidence to point to, I feel like this would increase retention. If one day management mandates that we need to rename ‘master’ to ‘primary’ it will make the shift easier because all the meetings where we get asked ‘why’ won’t happen, my team won’t stick out and be different. The change will happen across the board. Most importantly there would be less reason for people to feel like they shouldn’t be there.