Rules for renaming

By Saul Levmore and Carolyn Baker Ringel

CHICAGO — When Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” he meant that the essence of something is not determined by its label. Calling a plum a pear does not make it taste any different.

Names do have some meaning, of course. Every child is warned against “name calling”, even by those who like to think that words, unlike sticks and stones, do no harm. The names of Civil War generals, ex-presidents, the Sacklers (of opioid fame), and the Washington, DC, football team  have been removed, refused, challenged, or changed. No reasonable person today would take on the name Hitler, or even Adolf for that matter.

Names are intensely personal. When a transgender person takes a new name, their old name is called a “dead name”. The implication is that the new name signifies a new person; the old person and their affiliated gender, has passed away, and a new person, with a new gender and name, has come to life.

Renaming controversies are everywhere nowadays. Battles over the names of teams and schools are especially intense. There have been many renamings of college and professional sports teams in the United States, in addition to disputes over the names attached to public buildings, streets, and other spaces. In many cases, people were attached to (or simply accustomed to) an old name  —  usually a Native American reference  —  that younger generations found upsetting.

In 2017, Yale University renamed Calhoun College because Senator John C. Calhoun’s support of states’ rights, slavery and the nullification of federal law in the 1800s was found to be too offensive to be attached to such an important place. The college now carries the name of a pathbreaking computer scientist: Grace Murray Hopper.

Similarly, in 2020, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School became the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. That leaves room for the name of some illustrious graduate or future donor (though the Sacklers probably need not apply).

By contrast, the name of the US capital seems secure, even though George Washington was a slave owner. Indeed, many street and city names continue to memorialise people who can be associated with slavery.

In some cases, those who resist renaming have some moral arguments on their side. For example, although Wilson removed many Black Americans from high government positions and was undoubtedly racist, his domestic agenda was progressive. But others might counter that wrongdoing cannot be offset by good intentions or righteous acts.

The long-term question is whether any name is truly safe in the face of evolving norms and later objections. Virtually every name could eventually be associated with behaviour or beliefs that have become objectionable or deeply offensive, even if they were apparently admired or rewarded in an earlier era. None of us can be certain that every position held now will stand the test of time. Surely our forebears did both good and bad things when judged by today’s standards.

Three solutions to renaming conundrums are worth considering. The first idea is associated with statutes of limitation in law. Names could be subject by convention to objection for a limited period, such as 50 years. This imagined social and political convention has an arbitrary number attached to it, but that is what can help avoid the problem of there being no end in sight. We must recognise that what seems normal today might seem horrific to our descendants.

Under this approach, the State of Washington’s name is safe, even though Washington the man owned slaves. The country’s name is also safe, even though it is possible that a future generation will recognise that America is a derivative of Amerigo (Vespucci), a fifteenth-century explorer who refused to hire women as sailors.

For better or worse, it often takes a long time for social values to change. The renamed Washington Commanders football team had its previous name, the Redskins, for more than 80 years. But for this proposed solution to be effective, the social convention needs to be so strong that, after the agreed interval has passed, it will seem wrong to object to a name, however offensive it becomes.

A second idea is to borrow from the concept of term limits. Names would have a shelf life, with an understanding that the controlling organisation could choose to extend the name for another period.

Consider a name that had been assigned because of a donation, as in the case of the Sackler Institute at New York University. Here, the understanding, perhaps embodied in new laws, would be that the university is free to sell the name to a bidder. Again, nothing stops a for-profit company, like a football team, from hanging on to its name. It is market pressure that brings about changes.

Finally, there is the idea of buyouts. If the original name was not “purchased”, a renaming in honour of a donor or public figure is easily accomplished. Nothing stopped Princeton from accepting a gift — from an individual or group — that was conditioned on removing Wilson’s name. This idea is not entirely novel. Theatre venues and sports stadiums are often renamed for advertising purposes, and the corporate names attached to them usually come with term limits of a kind, by dint of the name being for sale.

As for sports teams, they presumably gain something from the long histories attached to their names. But if an old name is found to be offensive, a team and its critics can benefit by auctioning off a name change.

The virtue of these three approaches (which could be combined) is that each requires us to recognise that times change, that names can also change and that some prescribed limits to renaming are possible.

Saul Levmore is a professor and a former dean at the University of Chicago Law School. Carolyn Baker Ringel is an attorney with The Second Step, a domestic violence organisation. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2021. www.project-syndicate.org