The President has once again asked New Mexico to call itself New America, and I have done what I always do with an idea: taken the numbers and gone much too far with them.
I ranked all fifty states by renameability. The scoring is rigorous, in the way that anything is rigorous once you commit it to a spreadsheet. Four factors: syllables in the proposed new name, since nobody renames upward into four syllables. Whether the state already has a nickname that people use in the present tense, which is the only poll that matters. Whether anything important is already named for the state, because a state with a submarine named after it has brand infrastructure. And local resistance, measured by letters to the editor per month in each state’s largest paper.
The results are below, and they are going to come for me.
Ohio, first place. Ohioans have been renaming Ohio since before there was an Ohio, and the state’s political advertising this month has performed more rebrands than a Fortune 500 company. The name is merely the last one to be outvoted.
Rhode Island, third. The state settled its biggest naming fight in 2020, when voters cut a phrase longer than the state from the official name. Rhode Island has been through it. Rhode Island is available.
Iowa, fifth. The state has one crop, one fair, and one complex. “Corn” tests off the charts with every demographic except the one that lives there, and the counter-proposal, “The Good Iowa,” tests worse with that one.
New Mexico, mid-table and the only serious case. The obstacle is the state constitution, which is a difficult thing to say out loud in this debate because everything else in the country is also in a constitution, and none of that has stopped anybody. On pure syllable math — two letters gained, zero lost — New Mexico is a steal.
Louisiana, second from the bottom. I would rename Louisiana. I would rename it at midnight. I would rename it to make a point, and the point would be that the state already has the most beautiful name in the union and would trade it for a sandwich.
Delaware, dead last. The state rose eleven places on resistance alone after declining to comment on this column, which is Delaware’s standard response and also the behavior of a state that knows something.
The federal government cannot rename a state, but it has already renamed a gulf, a mountain, and a performing arts center, which tells you the real constraint is not legal. It’s inventory.
I have received three hundred and eleven emails since publishing the shortlist. Not one of them was about Ohio, which is how I know the ranking is working.