By any other name

Is there something about the date of July 23 and outdated sports nicknames? Last July 23, the truly despicable skin-tone moniker of the Washington gridiron squad was finally cashiered, albeit six years after the Daily News banished the word and associated cartoon logo. A year later, the club goes by the catchy Washington Football Team. It won’t be until next year when a new nickname will emerge.

The Cleveland Indians have no such problems. This July 23, they retired the name Indians at the end of this season and will begin spring training as the Cleveland Guardians. It’s a fine change — historically oppressed groups of people don’t make good mascots, especially when the term in question is not one they generally embrace — and team superfan Tom Hanks (who knew?) even narrated the video announcement.

Names of places and things have always changed. This hasn’t been Nieuw Amsterdam since the English pushed out the Dutch way back when. Local baseball fans haven’t rooted for the American

League Highlanders since 1912. They become the Yankees the next year, a fact plenty of Southerners many find objectionable.

Eric Adams, the likely next mayor, wants to rechristen the names of streets and schools and parks honoring long-dead men who weren’t so honorable, on account of being, say, slaveholders.

It’s a worthy effort to the extent we wipe away honorifics for despicable characters and lift up deserving or forgotten ones.

But not every old name that’s tainted should be packed up. George Washington was a slaveowner, but he was also a great man. Likewise Christoper Columbus, a navigator and explorer without peer who changed history. Amerigo Vespucci owned slaves. We can’t vouch for King James II, the Duke of York in New York.

Some names can go, others can stay. Reasonable minds can disagree on which are which. If Adams is smart and not sanctimonious about it, this will be a valuable process of public education, not a high-handed moral cleansing.