Quarkonia and the Pole Mass

The pole mass of a heavy quark is ambiguous by an amount of order ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{QCD}$. We show that the heavy-quark potential, $V(r)$, is similarly ambiguous, but that the total static energy, $2M_{pole}+V(r)$, is unambiguous when expressed in terms of a short-distance mass. This implies that the extraction of a short-distance mass from the quarkonium spectrum is free of an ambiguity of order ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{QCD}$, in contrast with the pole mass.