diff --git a/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx b/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx
index d881679287..40ddbb1779 100644
--- a/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx
+++ b/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
 
 TypeHandle TextEncoder::_type_handle;
 ConfigVariableEnum<TextEncoder::Encoding> TextEncoder::_default_encoding
-("default-encoding", TextEncoder::E_iso8859,
+("text-encoding", TextEncoder::E_iso8859,
  PRC_DESC("Specifies how international characters are represented in strings "
           "of 8-byte characters presented to Panda.  See TextEncoder::set_encoding()."));