diff --git a/UPDATING b/UPDATING
--- a/UPDATING
+++ b/UPDATING
@@ -27,6 +27,10 @@
 	world, or to merely disable the most expensive debugging functionality
 	at runtime, run "ln -s 'abort:false,junk:false' /etc/malloc.conf".)
 
+20250903:
+	The BLOAT_KERNEL_WITH_EXTERR kernel config option has been renamed to
+	EXTERR_STRINGS.
+
 20250827:
 	The names of pkg repositories defined in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf have
 	changed: "FreeBSD" is now "FreeBSD-ports", and "FreeBSD-kmods" is now
diff --git a/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC b/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
--- a/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
+++ b/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
 options 	SCHED_ULE		# ULE scheduler
 options 	NUMA			# Non-Uniform Memory Architecture support
 options 	PREEMPTION		# Enable kernel thread preemption
-options 	BLOAT_KERNEL_WITH_EXTERR
+options 	EXTERR_STRINGS
 options 	VIMAGE			# Subsystem virtualization, e.g. VNET
 options 	INET			# InterNETworking
 options 	INET6			# IPv6 communications protocols
diff --git a/sys/arm64/conf/std.arm64 b/sys/arm64/conf/std.arm64
--- a/sys/arm64/conf/std.arm64
+++ b/sys/arm64/conf/std.arm64
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 options 	SCHED_ULE		# ULE scheduler
 options 	NUMA			# Non-Uniform Memory Architecture support
 options 	PREEMPTION		# Enable kernel thread preemption
-options 	BLOAT_KERNEL_WITH_EXTERR
+options 	EXTERR_STRINGS
 options 	VIMAGE			# Subsystem virtualization, e.g. VNET
 options 	INET			# InterNETworking
 options 	INET6			# IPv6 communications protocols
diff --git a/sys/conf/options b/sys/conf/options
--- a/sys/conf/options
+++ b/sys/conf/options
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
 DDB_CTF		opt_ddb.h
 DDB_NUMSYM	opt_ddb.h
 EARLY_PRINTF	opt_global.h
-BLOAT_KERNEL_WITH_EXTERR	opt_global.h
+EXTERR_STRINGS	opt_global.h
 FULL_BUF_TRACKING	opt_global.h
 GDB
 KDB		opt_global.h
diff --git a/sys/sys/exterrvar.h b/sys/sys/exterrvar.h
--- a/sys/sys/exterrvar.h
+++ b/sys/sys/exterrvar.h
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
 #error "Specify error category before including sys/exterrvar.h"
 #endif
 
-#ifdef	BLOAT_KERNEL_WITH_EXTERR
+#ifdef	EXTERR_STRINGS
 #define	SET_ERROR_MSG(mmsg)	(mmsg)
 #else
 #define	SET_ERROR_MSG(mmsg)	NULL