When Place Names Don't Reflect Our Values
5 Questions to Ask Ourselves When Deciding Whether to Change a Name
Calhoun, Georgia is named for a man who championed race-based slavery and Native American deportation.
Jeff Davis County is named for a man who committed treason against our country to lead a short-lived nation founded to protect its right to enslave.
Few people defend those values today. Yet, across the South, cities and counties continue to bear the names of men who devoted their careers to those efforts. In Georgia alone, 16 counties are named for leaders who either laid the groundwork for the Civil War or fought for the Confederacy. Ten were named between 1905 and 1914, a decade that coincided with the peak of Confederate monument installations across the South. Another 14 counties are named for men who played key roles in ousting Native American tribes from Georgia. These counties often include the land they helped conquer for Georgia. At the same time, only one county is named for a woman (Hart, after revolutionary hero Nancy Hart). None are named for a person born after the Civil War.
If place names reflect the values of a society, what do Georgia’s place names reflect about ours?
Last month’s Southbound article explored why and how people name places, with an emphasis on how Georgia’s rivers, cities and counties received their names. That context laid the foundation for this month’s article wrestling with how we should handle places named for people who don’t embody our values today.
In one sense, this conversation isn’t new. In recent years, we’ve had extensive debates about renaming schools, streets, buildings, and parks. The U.S. Department of Defense is set to rename Georgia’s Forts Gordon and Benning among ten military installations nationwide named after prominent Confederates.
In summer 2020, the University System of Georgia commissioned an advisory group to examine the names of the buildings and schools at its 26 colleges/universities. After reviewing nearly 900 possibilities, the group released a 181-page report last fall recommending the renaming of 75 buildings and schools. However, the system decided not to act on those recommendations, stating:
“Understanding the history of names fulfills a knowledge mission that has guided USG for the past 90 years. The purpose of history is to instruct. History can teach us important lessons, lessons that if understood and applied make Georgia and its people stronger. The Board, therefore, will not pursue name changes on USG buildings and colleges as recommended by the advisory group’s report.”
While we’ve had heated debates about these and other decisions, to date the conversations haven’t broadened to consider city or county names, even though many of those names are being removed from streets, buildings, and schools.
This debate has many layers. On the one hand, names bestow honor and communicate a society’s values. They demonstrate who governs a society and what that society cares about. That’s why Germans quickly renamed Nazi place names in the aftermath of World War II, and South Africa’s new government set up naming commission not long after apartheid’s fall in the 1990s, ultimately leading to hundreds of town name changes. More recently, Ukrainian leaders announced they would rename streets with Russian or Belarusian names in Kyiv. As we consider our country, should an American society that no longer endorses racial and gender hierarchy continue to have cities and counties named after white men who set up and perpetuated that system?
On the other hand, replacing names hides objectionable aspects of our past and could remove the opportunity a name provides to have a conversation about that past. On top of that, it’s tempting to focus the decision on the namesake’s faults rather than looking at the totality of their contributions. We’re all human—future generations will no doubt look back in disbelief at our blind spots. And that’s before we consider the cost of renaming cities and counties. Couldn’t that money be spent solving our current challenges rather than relitigating the past?
My guess is that everyone reading this article leans toward one of the two camps described above. It’s easy just to stay where you are. But our nation’s constitution beckons us to “form a more perfect Union,” and Georgia’s state motto is “Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation.” Living out these values requires us to lean toward each other to understand and chart a path forward together.
With that posture in mind, I spent the last few months combing through press releases on naming decisions, advisory group findings, and toponymy journal articles to understand how leaders make naming and renaming decisions. Through that process, my main takeaway is that renaming is a messy process. Each situation involves nuance that makes it challenging to develop standards that apply in every case. Renaming often happens amid regime changes, symbolic cultural shifts, or significant swings in public sentiments. To determine a path forward, many organizations lay out criteria to guide their decisions (examples here and here). Using that model, I’ve landed on five questions we should ask ourselves when considering a name change.
What is the person’s primary legacy?
What motivated the naming?
How do local residents view the name, especially those affected by the namesake’s legacy?
What is the cost of changing the name?
What is the cost of not changing the name?
These questions are best considered as a whole rather than in isolation. Let’s take a deeper look at each.
1. What is the person’s primary legacy?
Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens led notable public service careers prior to the Civil War, but their primary legacy is taking up arms against the United States to found a nation that would protect the right to enslave other human beings. Wilson Lumpkin viewed his life’s work as ridding Georgia of “her Indian population.” He refused to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court decision protecting the Cherokee, signed the 1832 bill naming Lumpkin County (and nine others) in former Cherokee territory, and wrote a three-volume memoir outlining Cherokee removal. While these men made other contributions, their primary legacies center on subjugating non-white people, either by treating them as property or stealing their property.
It’s important to juxtapose their legacies against men like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who have also surfaced in renaming debates. Both men played pivotal roles in our nation’s creation and preservation, but Washington owned slaves and Lincoln oversaw violence against indigenous tribes in the American West. These faults are intolerable today. However, their careers weren’t dedicated to or defined by those injustices. Washington and Lincoln shouldn’t be in the same conversations as Davis, Stephens, and Lumpkin.
2. What motivated the naming?
As a complement to the last question, we need to understand why people chose a name. Was the name given because of overarching contributions that benefited all people, or was it to honor their role in dehumanizing certain groups of people?
When Georgia carved out new counties from Cherokee land in 1832, five were named for men who led efforts to expel them (Cobb, Forsyth, Gilmer, Lumpkin, and Cass). Similarly, in 1826 Governor George Troup threatened to attack U.S. soldiers that President Adams sent to protect the Muscogee tribe’s land rights. Adams backed down, and Georgia took the land. One year later, legislators named Troup County in part of that land.
After John C. Calhoun died in 1850, Georgia legislators renamed a small Northwest Georgia town after him and created a new county in Southwest Georgia. Both locations have minimal connection to the former South Carolina senator and U.S. Vice President, but the naming occurred amid a wave of Southern states naming places after Calhoun to venerate his defense of the South’s right to slavery. In the early 1900s, ten Georgia counties were created and named after Confederate leaders, an era when leaders sought to use monuments and place names to recast the Confederacy as a righteous cause.
While the legislative documents naming these cities and counties usually don’t mention intent, the timing and context suggest that the namesakes’ actions to propagate slavery, the Confederacy, or Native American expulsion likely motivated legislators’ choice of names. As a result, they should be stronger candidates for renaming than instances where other motives drove the decision.
3. How do local residents view the name, especially those affected by the namesake’s legacy?
When considering the appropriateness of a name, it could be easy to assume that we know the viewpoints of people live in that community. It’s important to listen to their perspectives, especially non-white residents who choose to live there despite it being named after someone who fought against their human rights. In many cases, their perspectives may be a small minority and thus hold limited political sway. For example, how do black residents of Calhoun (7%) or Jeff Davis County (15%) view their community’s name? How do Georgia residents of Cherokee or Muscogee heritage (less than 1%) feel about cities and counties named after men who fought to prevent their right to live here?
Jacksonville’s Duval County Schools provides an example of what that engagement could look like. In summer 2020, the district started a process to explore renaming nine schools that bore names of Confederate leaders or men who mistreated Native Americans. Over the course of the year, it held at least 28 public forums and board meetings to gather feedback from students, alumni, parents, and other stakeholders with a verified connection to the school. It partnered with the local board of elections to administer a community ballot, receiving thousands of votes on whether to change a school’s name and options for a new name. Ultimately, the board voted to rename six schools in June 2021.
Local donations and the district’s beverage contract covered the $825K cost. The Jacksonville Jaguars paid to replace the sports team uniforms at the three high schools. To show the effort wasn’t to erase the past, high schools purchased additional cases to house trophies and memorabilia. For the most controversial change—Robert E. Lee to Riverside High—the school retained its “Generals” nickname for sports teams. The decision wasn’t without opposition, but it allowed for community voice and recognized the need to remember—but no longer honor—that past.
South Africa’s recent renaming of Port Elizabeth, its sixth largest city, to Gqeberha demonstrates what can happen when leaders skip local engagement. Founded in 1820 and named after a British imperialist’s wife, the city serves as an important seaport and tourism destination.
In 2021, the national government renamed the city after a Xhosa word for the river that flows through the city as “part of a Government Programme to transform South Africa's Heritage landscape.” However, many local residents across racial and political lines opposed the change, including Nqaba Bhanga, the executive mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality that encompasses the city. He argued:
“Names should unify people, but this one – with no emotional attachment to the people of Port Elizabeth – has divided our community. The majority of our people are angry at this name because it is not their identity. (It will have) a devastating effect on the economy of the city, especially in the tourism industry, because people won’t know their destination.”
Bhanga and others’ appeals of the name change were denied. No doubt some residents would oppose any name change, but engagement with local leaders could have increased buy-in, particularly among Africans. Without that, one year later many signs across the city remain unchanged, and many South Africans continue to refer to the city by its old name.
Without meaningful local engagement, name changes could be counterproductive.
4. What is the cost of changing the name?
Practically speaking, changing a city or county name is more costly than removing a monument or changing a school name. There are public costs for signage, stationary, and rebranding, along with lobbying costs for state legislation to approve the change. Private businesses also bear costs to update materials, signs, and websites. Take, for example, Jeff Davis County. Along with the county name, all four public schools, the hospital, the courthouse, and offices for social services are all named after the county. While I can’t find reliable estimates in the United States for city/county name changes, the U.S. House appropriations committee last year proposed $1 million to begin the process of renaming ten military bases. We won’t know the full cost until this fall, but that is likely a fraction of the actual costs. Recent school name changes have cost as much as $500,000. Renaming a town or county would be much higher.
Since most counties and cities are strapped for cash, name change expenses would be a tough sell even for community leaders who agree with it in theory. They have to weigh name change costs against competing local priorities that may feel more urgent to their constituents, such as affordable housing, public safety, or pothole filling. Most places won’t be able to keep the same name but change who it’s named after, like Seattle’s King County did in 2005 when county leaders swapped its namesake from Alabama slaveholder and former U.S. Vice President William Rufus King to Dr. Martin Luther King. Thus, the effort likely would require private dollars.
Another non-financial cost is the nostalgia connected to a place’s name that is unrelated to injustices promote by its namesake. For example, Calhoun has held its name for 172 years. Over time, popular understanding of “Calhoun” has shifted such that most people have little to no memory of who John C. Calhoun was and what he did. The name “Calhoun” is more connected to memories in the town where they grew up or the high school’s yellow jacket mascot than a man who championed slavery and Native American expulsion. Thus, renaming the town would uproot more than its connection to the former Vice President—it would replace a key anchor of meaning that is unrelated to the injustice he promoted.
5. What is the cost of not changing the name?
When faced with significant financial costs, it could be easy to minimize the cost of not changing the name. Those costs may be financial, such as a recent study that found that houses on streets named after prominent Confederate figures sell for 3% less than similar homes on other streets. Companies looking to invest in areas may be hesitant to select counties where the name could hinder business (e.g., Jeff Davis County).
But the largest cost is psychological.
Imagine being a black child growing up in Jeff Davis County, where 15% of the county is black. You were born at Jeff Davis Hospital. Every school you’ll attend until high school graduation is named for Jeff Davis. If you go to the county courthouse or the sheriff’s office, it is named for Jeff Davis. One day in 3rd grade you grab your mom’s hand to walk across Jeff Davis Street after leaving the Verizon store. You pass the red marble statue of Jeff Davis on the corner, surrounded on two sides with black wrought iron fence, one you’ve seen many times before.
This time, though, you pause to read the inscription on the side, “Presented to preserve the memory of the sacrifices of the people of the South as exemplified by our president.” This stirs your curious mind—after all, you see Jeff Davis’ name everywhere you turn. He must be important.
You look up to your mother and ask, “What did he do as our president? What were those sacrifices for?”
There are no answers to these questions that don’t plant seeds of inferiority or mistrust—seeds that will be tough to dislodge.
Now, let’s swap seats. Imagine being a white child growing up in Jeff Davis County. You also were born in Jeff Davis Hospital and attend Jeff Davis schools. Perhaps your parents even raise you to believe that your family would have sided with the Union if the Civil War was fought today because of your opposition to slavery. One day in 3rd grade, you leave the Verizon store and walk past the same red marble statue, pausing to read that inscription for the first time. It stirs your curious mind—after all, you see Jeff Davis’ name everywhere you turn. He must be important.
You look up to your mother and ask, “What did he do as our president? What were those sacrifices for?”
Your mother explains, “Sadly, he was the president of the Confederacy that fought to keep slavery.”
Confused, you follow up with another question, “If he did that, why do we have a statue of him? Why are so many places named after him?”
There are no answers to these questions that don’t plant seeds of doubt about whether we truly no longer venerate Jefferson Davis—seeds that will be tough to dislodge.
While not easily quantified, these costs are significant. We have to be careful not to allow high upfront financial cost of name changes to overshadow the multi-generational psychological costs of continuing to honor men who centered their careers on subjugating other human beings.
Place names represent more than simply history to instruct us—they reflect what we value and who we choose to honor. If we wrestle with these five questions, sometimes changing a name will make sense. Other times it won’t. But, every time the conversation will move beyond the knee jerk reactions of either “Let’s change them all” or “Don’t erase history” that prevent us from making progress.
Only then can we strive for a future that honors human dignity instead of honoring men of the past who didn’t.
I would love to hear your reflections on the five questions. What sounds right? What am I missing? Please chime in below with a comment or respond in an email.
This article is the sixth in a series of articles about Cherokee expulsion from Georgia. In a few weeks, I’ll conclude this series with a final article on how this season of learning about and reflecting upon Cherokee expulsion from Northwest Georgia has helped me see the world through a different lens.
If you think others would enjoy reading along too, please forward this email or share via social media. Personal recommendations are the best way to widen who reads these articles each month.
This was fantastic, Sam. Combined your public policy background with your thoughtful attention to history, love for your home state, and tangible applications for the rest of us around the south.
A local Jackson inner city elementary school named Jefferson Davis recently let its students participate in a renaming process. We now have Barack and Michelle Obama Magnet School. I don’t know if they asked all of your questions, but the result seems to have been a galvanizing change for the school.
Sam, once again you’ve put your finger on the pulse of an issue in a way that is relatable and important. Your 5 questions are just right for considering the renaming of places. I especially agree with your reasoning in the first question about looking at the legacy of a leader. I wish people in decision-making positions would take care to change what should be changed but not arbitrarily change all. Thank you for keeping me alert to my world in intriguing ways!