What's in a (school) name?

Are school names becoming too green? That's the debate in America initiated by a new piece of research for one of my favourite think tanks - the Manhattan Institute.

It's a lovely, eccentric piece of work that illumunates the way the culture is changing.

The researchers discovered that fewer schools are being name after presidents these days and more after natural features:

Of almost 3,000 public schools in Florida, five honor George Washington, compared with eleven named after manatees.

In Minnesota, the naming of schools after presidents declined from 14 percent of schools built before 1956 to 3 percent of schools built in the last decade.

In New Jersey, naming schools after people dropped from 45 percent of schools built before 1948 to 27 percent of schools built since 1988.

In the last two decades, a public school built in Arizona was almost fifty times more likely to be named after such things as a mesa or a cactus than after a president.

In Florida, nature names for schools increased from 19 percent of schools built before 1958 to 37 percent of schools built in the last decade.

Today, a majority of all public school districts nationwide do not have a single school named after a president.

What's the best British school name you've come across?