diff --git a/imagegenerator/generate.py b/imagegenerator/generate.py
index 5933805..11c6a05 100644
--- a/imagegenerator/generate.py
+++ b/imagegenerator/generate.py
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ print(im.size)  # Get the width and hight of the image for iterating over
 
 variablename="msg.payload"
 if (args.variablename):
-    variablename=outputfilename.split('.')[0]
+    variablename="var "+outputfilename.split('.')[0]
     print("Using variablename="+str(variablename))
 
 output_pre=""