It's not easily solved with a rename on inherit, because the resulting object has to be substitutable in all the places where any one of the multiple base class

It's not easily solved with a rename on inherit, because the resulting object has to be substitutable in all the places where any one of the multiple base classes are expected. Those places expect the names to be what they are, they don't know about renamed names. The diamond problem is actually about the situation when through at least two levels of inheritance, a class ends up inheriting the same base two or more times. C++ has two choices for the diamond problem: virtual base inheritance results in one copy. Regular inheritance in multiple copies. The clash problem is separate from the diamond problem. A clash occurs when you inherit from two bases that use the same names, but are usually separate bases. For instance a lottery game class inherits graphics and lottery; the former provides graphics::draw and the latter lottery::draw. In C++ that is dealt with by leaving the name lookup be ambiguous. When the derived game object is used like this: game.draw(...), the name lookup is ambiguous. The program has to specify game.lottery::draw(...) or game.graphics::draw(). Places in the program that use the object through references to one of the bases do not face the ambiguity. Given a graphics &gobj, gobj.draw() is unambiguous, even if that object is really a game class instance that also has lottery::draw in it. Scope resolution operator can resolve the ambiguity under the diamond problem, when inheritance is plain (not virtual). Say A inherits B and C. Both B and C inherit D. So now A has two D's. Say D has a member m. Given an A object aobj,I think we can separately reference aobj.B::D::m to get to the D::m that was inherited via B, and aobj.C::D::m to get to the copy inherited via C.