A bill to make it harder to change a city’s name might make it easier in some cases.

Republican Senator Jack Sandlin says Indianapolis businesses asked for the bill to head off any idea of changing Indy’s name. He says there’s no movement he’s aware of to do that, but says efforts elsewhere to strip the names of former Confederates and other names now considered offensive or inappropriate have put the issue on the radar. He says there’s both a monetary cost to reprinting piles of business stationery and an intangible cost to rebuilding the identity a city has worked to establish.

The Senate has already passed Sandlin’s bill blocking any name change for Indy or other cities mentioned by name in state law. But a House committee has put off a vote while the legislature’s research arm reviews how different cities would be affected. Indianapolis and four other cities are named in the Constitution, and there’s an argument may already be immune to a name change without a constitutional amendment.

Analysts are also studying just how many references there are in the rest of Indiana law to an estimated 140 cities.

Current law says a petition signed by 500 city voters puts a name change before the city council. The bill would put the decision to a referendum instead and would make the signature requirement the same as third parties face to get on an election ballot: two-percent of the vote for secretary of state. But for cities up to the size of Muncie, that would likely reduce the number of signatures needed, not raise it.

Indianapolis Representative Justin Moed (D) questions the need for the bill. He says it seeks to ban name changes no one has proposed, while not addressing name changes that are taking place, to streets, parks, and buildings.