What’s in a name? Suggestions for the school formerly named George Fox

Nominations are currently pouring in, no doubt, for a new name that will grace the middle school located at 7922 Outing Ave. in Pasadena.

Stripped of the name George Fox because of the former school superintendent’s racist defense of unequal pay for Black teachers in the 1930s, the school could be named for something prosaic and efficient: Pasadena Middle School. Frankly, it’s a little unimaginative.

So, as this process works its way through the inevitable going-nowhere suggestions — Schooly McSchool face, Michael J. Fox and Megan Fox have all been uttered on social media — it might be instructive to break down the possibilities.

If George Fox taught us anything, it is that today’s powerbroker can be tomorrow’s pariah.

When Fox uttered his infamous words elevating the worst white teacher over the best Black teacher in value, it was racist. It remains racist today. What’s changed is that racism is no longer the official government policy, and it is somewhat easier to call out.

So, naming a school for a person runs the risk of facing a shift in how history views that person’s claim to fame. Yet, there are a handful of names worth listing because they seem immutable to that kind of change.

Jason Mileo graduated from Chesapeake High School and joined the Marine Corps. He was the first Anne Arundel County resident to die in the 20-yearlong war that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Sgt. Mileo died on April 14, 2003, in a friendly fire incident near Baghdad.

Isabel Shipley Cunningham helped create the idea of Pasadena. She taught in both Anne Arundel County and Baltimore County public high schools; lectured widely on horticulture and plant exploration and, most importantly for this consideration, is, perhaps, Pasadena’s greatest known author.

Her two histories of the community, “Between Two Rivers” and “Pasadena Rivers: A Closer Look at the land between two rivers,” just might be the only books written about the community so far.

Brandi Burkhardt was a few years ahead of Mileo at Chesapeake High, where she graduated in 1999. Now a moderately known actress, she’s been in half a dozen television shows and performed on Broadway. Her career of late has focused on regional stage productions. Place names are probably a richer source of ideas.

There is no mountain in Pasadena save one, Mountain Road. Or perhaps, a mountain depends on your perspective.

One story attributed the curious name of this two-lane backbone to early English colonialists who considered some of the hills along parts of the shoreline to be mountains. Mountain Middle School might have a ring to it.

Water is a more logical source of inspiration given the geography, and the nearest body of water is Stoney Creek. Renaming the school Stoney Creek Middle would have a nice symmetry. Chesapeake Bay Middle School serves Pasadena, and both the Severn River and Magothy River have middle schools bearing their names in Arnold. There is also a Patapsco Middle School in Ellicott City and a Curtis Creek Middle School in Baltimore.

An economical choice would be to keep the name but change the namesake.

George Fox was the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, known to most people as Quakers. Maryland was founded on the idea of religious freedom by English Catholics. As part of mission work in the colonies, Fox visited a meeting house at what is today West River in 1692.

That would save on lettering and stationery, although it would require some explanation and upset everyone with qualms about mixing religion and government.

Its most beneficial outcome would, notably, save the school mascot — a fox.

You can submit your suggestion through Wednesday by emailing schoolname@ aacps.org.