diff --git a/UPDATING b/UPDATING
--- a/UPDATING
+++ b/UPDATING
@@ -27,6 +27,13 @@
 	world, or to merely disable the most expensive debugging functionality
 	at runtime, run "ln -s 'abort:false,junk:false' /etc/malloc.conf".)
 
+202311xx:
+	The special keep directive to add additional symbols to maintain in
+	crunchgen configurations no longer adds a leading underscore to symbol
+	names.  It is suspected that this will have no practical impact, but if
+	you use your own crunchgen configuration file with a keep directive
+	please file a PR and assign it to kevans.
+
 20231027:
 	Forward compatibility (running the new code on old kernels) for the
 	"ino64" project have been removed. The need for it has passed long ago.
diff --git a/share/mk/bsd.crunchgen.mk b/share/mk/bsd.crunchgen.mk
--- a/share/mk/bsd.crunchgen.mk
+++ b/share/mk/bsd.crunchgen.mk
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 #  CRUNCH_SRCDIR_${P}: base source directory for program ${P}
 #  CRUNCH_BUILDOPTS_${P}: additional build options for ${P}
 #  CRUNCH_ALIAS_${P}: additional names to be used for ${P}
+#  CRUNCH_KEEP_${P}: additional symbols to keep for ${P}
 #
 # By default, any name appearing in CRUNCH_PROGS or CRUNCH_ALIAS_${P}
 # will be used to generate a hard link to the resulting binary.
@@ -101,6 +102,9 @@
 .ifdef CRUNCH_LIBS_${P}
 	echo special ${P} lib ${CRUNCH_LIBS_${P}} >>${.TARGET}
 .endif
+.ifdef CRUNCH_KEEP_${P}
+	echo special ${P} keep ${CRUNCH_KEEP_${P}} >>${.TARGET}
+.endif
 .for A in ${CRUNCH_ALIAS_${P}}
 	echo ln ${P} ${A} >>${.TARGET}
 .endfor
diff --git a/usr.sbin/crunch/crunchgen/crunchgen.c b/usr.sbin/crunch/crunchgen/crunchgen.c
--- a/usr.sbin/crunch/crunchgen/crunchgen.c
+++ b/usr.sbin/crunch/crunchgen/crunchgen.c
@@ -1128,7 +1128,7 @@
 	fprintf(outmk, "\n");
 	fprintf(outmk, "\tcrunchide -k _crunched_%s_stub ", p->ident);
 	for (lst = p->keeplist; lst != NULL; lst = lst->next)
-		fprintf(outmk, "-k _%s ", lst->str);
+		fprintf(outmk, "-k %s ", lst->str);
 	fprintf(outmk, "%s.lo\n", p->name);
 }