What’s in a name?  It’s nice when we honor significant people by naming a building or center after them.  But the tendency of owners to insist on using the full names borders on the annoying at times.

Once upon a time, many of the hallowed halls at Western Illinois University carried the full first and last names and middle initials of honored faculty.  But you never see reference made any more to “Irving J. Garwood Hall.”  Even the sign in front of the building simply reads “Garwood Hall.”

As time passes, officials find it easier to shorten a building’s name.  Common folks shorten the name immediately but, for officialdom, the full name hangs on for a while.
The university library tends to have reams of press releases written about its activities in any given year.  It didn’t take long for someone to figure out that it saved time and ink to drop any constant reference to “The Leslie F. Malpass Library” and simply refer to it as “Malpass Library” even though the sign in front of the building carries the full name of this past university president.
The holdouts so far in apparent insistence on constant formality are “Alfred D. Boyer Stadium” and “The Donald S. Spencer Recreation Center.”

You never hear reference made to “Ray ‘Rock’ Hanson Field” and its football players but we’re always told the baseball team plays at “Alfred D. Boyer Stadium.”
In the stadium’s first year, one of the student baseball announcers started the game by saying, “It’s a nice afternoon out here on Al Boyer Field.”  It rolled off the tongue and sounded very natural.

Students might call it “The Rec” or “Spencer Rec” but almost every WIU press release refers to it as “The Donald S. Spencer Recreation Center.” That’s quite a mouthful.
One of the monthly recreation tabs in the student newspaper was simply entitled “Donald S. Spencer.” But I think someone simply forgot to put the last two words in the layout.

Some poor headline writer tried to save space and ink this year and referred to the center as SRC.  The only trouble is we have an institution in town named Spoon River College which has pretty much laid claim to the SRC designation. 

The stiff references will probably continue for a while because the buildings are new.  A few years down the road, WIU campus maps will include the designations “Spencer Rec Center” and “Boyer Stadium” joining such landmarks as “Hanson Field” and “Garwood Hall.”

Patrick Stout is a columnist and correspondent for The Macomb Journal. Reach him at patrick@ MacombJournal.com.