The Norwich Northern Distributor is to be renamed the Broadland Northway.
Just weeks before the road is due to be fully opened, council leaders have plumped for the new name, having considered a number of options.
They have defended their decision to give the 12.5 mile road a new name, but concede that some people will continue to refer to it as the NDR.
Broadland District Council, which all of the road passes through, had responsibility for naming it, but Norfolk County Council, which developed it, got to make suggestions.
A shortlist of three was drawn up, which Norfolk county councillors whose divisions are on the road's route, getting to select.
Broadland Northway was the preferred option. It came ahead of Hundred Furlong Way, suggested because the road's length is almost exactly 100 furlongs and St Walstan Way, named after a farm labourer who worked in Taverham and is now the patron saint of farms and farmers.
Other suggestions were considered, but not shortlisted. They included Earl Marshal Road/Way or Bigod Road/Way; Attlewick Road (a combination of Attlebridge at the west end and Postwick in the east) and Harnser Road or Hedgebetty Road after the Norfolk dialect words for heron and hedge sparrow.
Andrew Proctor, leader of Broadland District Council, said: ''here were a few options, certainly, but this stood out immediately as the best one.
'The actual name was a very simple deduction. All the road is in Broadland and it's actually to the north, so logic says Broadland, first word, Northway, there's the second part, nothing more sinister, more difficult than that.'
But he added: 'I'm sure most people will still call it the NDR. There always will be the recognition this was the NDR. As time goes on I'm sure people will recognise Broadland Northway as to what it has become, as opposed to what it started out as.'
The road, which has the number A1270, has been known as the Northern Distributor Road since the early 2000s, when the idea of a route to the north of the city was revived.
The sections of the road from the A1067 to the A140 Cromer Road and the A140 to the A1151 Wroxham Road opened last year. The final section, from the A1151 to the A47 at Postwick is due to open next month.
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