diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index d19ba632181..c7a867af838 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -751,6 +751,9 @@ Release 2.8.0 - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-9259. Make SO_SNDBUF size configurable at DFSClient side for hdfs
     write scenario. (Mingliang Liu via mingma)
 
+    HDFS-9299. Give ReplicationMonitor a readable thread name (Staffan Friberg
+    via Colin P. McCabe)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     HDFS-8026. Trace FSOutputSummer#writeChecksumChunks rather than
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/blockmanagement/BlockManager.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/blockmanagement/BlockManager.java
index 74277efaa6c..11c556d9a34 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/blockmanagement/BlockManager.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/blockmanagement/BlockManager.java
@@ -468,6 +468,7 @@ boolean shouldUpdateBlockKey(final long updateTime) throws IOException {
   public void activate(Configuration conf) {
     pendingReplications.start();
     datanodeManager.activate(conf);
+    this.replicationThread.setName("ReplicationMonitor");
     this.replicationThread.start();
     mxBeanName = MBeans.register("NameNode", "BlockStats", this);
   }