Stop naming buildings (and streets, and parks, and ships, and mountains) after people
Eventually, inevitably, someone will decide that your well-meaning gesture was a terrible error.
I originally published a version of this story on Medium in 2021. I’ve edited and updated it in light of recent news reports about labor leader César Chávez (1927–1993), whom the AFL-CIO website calls “a folk hero and a symbol of hope for millions of Americans.”
“Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years” — New York Times, March 18, 2026 (gift link)
“California is renaming César Chávez’s holiday. Now, cities are slowly erasing his name from streets” — Cal Matters, March 19, 2026
“Congressman Burchett Issues Request to the Navy to Change the Name of the USNS Cesar Chávez” — Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), March 19, 2026
“Petition to re-rename Cesar Chavez St back to Army or something” - r/San Francisco, March 18, 2026
The revelations about Cesar Chavez are grim and disturbing: multiple incidents of rape and abuse, in some cases involving girls as young as 12 and 13. But Chavez has been dead for more than 30 years and can’t be held accountable. What to do besides commiserate? One loud response: Erase his name from the dozens of schools, streets, and parks around the U.S. that had honored him.
It’s a start. Here’s what to do next: Stop naming all those things after any people. Just stop.
San Francisco learned this lesson the hard way five years ago.
In late January 2021, the School Names Advisory Committee of San Francisco’s Board of Education voted six to one to rename 44 of the district’s 121 schools, with the goal of ridding the public sphere of any names that might call to mind racism or sexism. Among the names targeted for replacement: George Washington (owned slaves), Abraham Lincoln (encouraged settlement of the West; authorized mass execution of Sioux warriors), Robert Louis Stevenson (once used the word Japanee instead of Japanese in a poem), and U.S. Senator and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein (it’s complicated).
The committee’s process was short on historical research or consultation — one committee member dismissed the very notion, saying “We don’t need to belabor history” — or logic. The decision to deep-six Lincoln took five seconds. A school named for Malcolm X was spared despite its namesake’s early career as a pimp.
This show of civic self-righteousness made headlines both local and national. How about renaming the whole city, veteran San Francisco columnist Carl Nolte mused after the decision. “San Francisco was named by missionaries for a Roman Catholic saint. Clearly that fits the guidelines for a new name.” In The Atlantic, Gary Kamiya — who has studied and written extensively about San Francisco history, and who now publishes an excellent newsletter on Substack — was unsparing: The renaming decision was inconsistent, uninformed, a “holier-than-thou crusade,” “a joke.” Not to mention shockingly expensive. (All that signage, for starters.)
Three months later, the board reversed its decision, voting unanimously to suspend the renaming plan.
The San Francisco denaming debacle was only the latest in a string of such decisions. In January 2020, UC Berkeley changed the name of its law school from Boalt Hall to UC Berkeley School of Law, citing the newly discovered racist writings of namesake attorney John Henry Boalt. In June 2020, Princeton University voted to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school because of the former president’s “racist thinking and policies.” We can expect more of the same elsewhere, as boards and legislatures attempt to redress historical wrongs (one perspective) or impose a political-correctness agenda (a counter-perspective).
Which brings me back to my modest proposal: Stop naming things after people, living or dead. No schools. No streets. No courthouses. No fountains. Just quit it.
I am well aware that tradition is not on my side here. The custom of naming things after people goes back a long way in the United States. Harvard University (founded in 1636) was named for John Harvard, a clergyman who left money for its establishment when he died at age 31. Many schools are named for Horace Mann (1796–1859), who is considered the father of public education in the United States. A whole state, Pennsylvania, is named for Sir William Penn (1621–1670), who never ventured to the New World. It was his son, also named William, who actually made the voyage and founded the colony; he had wanted to call the place “New Wales” or simply “Sylvania,” which means “forest,” but King Charles II insisted on naming it after young William’s father, a staunch Royalist. The elder Penn lived in London next door to the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, who described his neighbor as a “mean fellow” and a “false knave.” Maybe we should consider denaming Pennsylvania.
Here is the point: Once we attach a human being’s name to an institution, we’re stuck with that human’s whole messy story. While it’s instructive to read about and learn from that story, we can (and should) do it without turning the person’s name into an object of civic reverence.
But, you ask, what about philanthropists? Don’t they deserve naming rights?
That’s easy. They do not.
A gift is a gift. Writing a check only if the recipient agrees to display your name in 20-foot letters is something else. It’s blackmail. Go ahead and name your own “initiative” after yourselves, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, but your names don’t belong on San Francisco General Hospital, which is run by the city’s Department of Public Health. Note the word public.
But if we can’t name buildings after people, you cry, whatever shall we name them?
Also easy! You name them something that isn’t human.
Renaming your public schools? Birds are nice. I’d like to see a Tanager Elementary School. A Night Heron Vocational Academy. An Egret University. Go Plumes!
Landmarks work, too. There’s a Palisades High School in Los Angeles, a Skyline High School here in Oakland, California.
You could name your school after a specialization, such as Bronx High School of Science. Oakland Technical High School was designed in 1914 to resemble the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They could have named it “Edison” or “Whitney,” but thankfully they avoided the whole dead-white-male problem and came up with something timelessly appropriate. San Francisco had the right idea, in 1982, when it established a public School of the Arts (SOTA). In 2010, it was renamed Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, in recognition of the Japanese-American sculptor and California native who had campaigned for the school’s establishment. I like Asawa’s work, and she may have gotten a kick out of having her name attached to a school. (She died in 2013.) But I’d rather see a plaque about her life and art books in the library than her name on the façade.
Numbers make splendidly neutral names. Generations of New York City schoolkids have proudly claimed P.S. 135 (or whatever) as their alma mater. Banks and churches have long used ordinal numbers; I’m especially fond of Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bank.
Also OK by me: groups of people. Veterans Day. Mother’s Day. The newly proposed Farmworkers’ Day. Just don’t single out one veteran, mother, or farmworker.
I’m not doctrinaire. If you have a law firm, go ahead and name it Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, after your esteemed founders. If you’re a rich narcissist and your ego will wilt if your surname isn’t embellishing your hotel, knock yourself out.
But elsewhere we’re overdue for some disruption. Public institutions should honor the public, not one inconsistently admirable individual.
Oh, and while we’re at it? Let’s get rid of statues of people, too.
We have a whole-ass state named for Warshington, that's gonna be a tough one to unwind. haha
Tucson, AZ, has Saguaro High School. It's named after the quintessential symbol of the USAnian southwest, the saguaro cactus.
Brilliant.