Some names say more than others.

Nowhere is this more true than with our public parks, which, when thoughtfully monikered, can ring with the echoes of our island’s rich past. Some park names are wonderfully evocative – Battle Point, Fort Ward and T’Chookwap, for instance – reflecting our military history and pre-Columbian heritage.

Others are identified by their colorful neighborhoods (Eagledale, Camp Yeomalt, Strawberry Hill) and at least one – Fay Bainbridge – recalls the storied family that helped establish the park itself. Conversely, and without being too specific, at least one park name (cough cough Grand cough Forest) was essentially chosen out of a hat and conveys little.

With three new public parks about to open around the island, park officials are convening a short-term committee to consider new and lasting identities for the properties.

Under discussion are the Hall parcel on the north shore of Eagle Harbor, the Spargur property off Hidden Cove Road, and a new hiking trail linking Battle Point and the (cough) Grand Forest. All were purchased under the city’s open space program and have been transferred to the park district stable.

We trust that committee and community alike will mine our rich cultural legacy for ideas – and there are many.

For the Hall parcel, we might need look no further than the Hawley neighborhood in which it sits; there, a Mosquito Fleet landing was established in 1927, and the property counts a creek and marshland amongst its geographic features. Hawley Creek Park, perhaps? Or, historian Jerry Elfendahl suggests, the name Tillikum Park could honor one of the island’s popular ferries of the 1950s and ‘60s. (Tillikum, he notes, means “friend” in Chinook jargon. Wags, meanwhile, might want to honor the late Al Beach, a BHS teacher who lived next door to the parcel and penned the definitive book on island steamer landings – Beach’s Beach?

As to the new trail connecting Battle Point and the (cough) Grand Forest, Bainbridge museum curator Lorraine Scott suggests it would be an excellent candidate for a natural history moniker.

“Can anyone identify a prevailing species or plant along the trail?” she asks. “If you start looking at historic uses it would have mostly farms, and then how would you hone in on just one family name?”

And out Port Madison way, Jerry notes that John W. “Johnny” Adams – “Ivar’s architect, who designed more waterfront projects than the Port of Seattle” – once lived in the neighborhood, on the very spot where nearby T’Chookwap Park now sits; his name was a close runner-up when that park was christened. A lifetime yachtsman (in an age when that word didn’t connote obscene lucre), he founded the low-key Port Madison Yacht Club. The name John Adams Park would honor his legacy, and mirror the presidential names dropped by the Wilkes Expedition – Jefferson (Point), Monroe (Point), Madison (Port) – around Puget Sound.

Fine ideas all, and no doubt there are many other possibilities for these wonderful parcels; give them some thought and drop a line to this newspaper or to Perry Barrett c/o the park district to enrich the discussion.

Three new parks with names that reflect our island’s rich cultural legacy – now that would be truly (cough) grand.