diff --git a/Makefile.in b/Makefile.in
index 1677718ab..2e6a00e41 100644
--- a/Makefile.in
+++ b/Makefile.in
@@ -157,7 +157,11 @@ realclean:
 #     and then use etags' --include option to incorporate them all by
 #     reference into a top-level TAGS file, but the --include option
 #     seems to be deprecated, and this works fine.
-TAGS:
+# 
+#     The extra 'tags' name is useful --- 'make TAGS' won't run the
+#     commands if the file `TAGS' already exists, but `make tags'
+#     doesn't have that problem.
+TAGS tags:
 	etags \
 	  --regex='/SCM_PROC[^"]*"[^"]*"/' \
 	  `find . -name '*.[ch]' -o -name '*.scm'`