What's wrong with "Cream Ale?"
Well, for starters, it turns out that nobody knows what the hell a cream ale is. People tend to assume that it's a descriptive term (it isn't) or that the beer will have vanilla (it doesn't) or lactose (it doesn't) or that it will just somehow be "creamy" (ew). And the people who are familiar with the style tend to associate it with some less-than-desirable examples.
So... people are more familiar with "Table Beer?"
...no? Not as such, since it's not a "real style."****
I thought you said you thought this through.
We did! Long story short, we felt that "table beer" was pretty descriptive (people are generally pretty familiar with the concept of "table wine," and it's not that big of a logical jump to beer), and it at least sounds like it should be a real beer style, and also there was a notable local example that a number of people were familiar with, and... what the hell else can we call this beer? Truth be told, it's the recipe for a Classic American Pilsner (a style which has been defunct for decades), brewed with a Belgian yeast (which is... not to style for a Pilsner, to say the least). What would you call it?
Was there anything else you considered?
Oh god yes. It's close-ish to a saison, but that's a style with some... baggage, and really it's more like a session-strength saison, which around here usually gets labeled as "grisette," only even fewer people know what a grisette is and that's the whole problem we were trying to avoid in the first place, and "everyday ale" is too broad and "dry hopped light ale" is weirdly clinical sounding and why don't we just stick with "cream ale?" Oh, right, because everybody thinks it's got milk in it (or, arguably worse, they think it's like Genny), so how about we use a different vague, obscure (yet slightly more descriptive) style name? Anyway, we went in circles on that for, oh, about three years, and now here we are! Table beer! At least until we use all the labels that say so!
** As in, the first week has been sold out for a couple days and next week is starting to fill up already.
*** We, uh, kinda forgot to order the local version of a key (yet relatively minor in scale) ingredient.
**** We have strong opinions on the "that's not a real style" argument, but we're aware that said opinions are not interesting, so we'll leave it at that.