In August 1969, with the Battle of the Bogside raging, a huge graffito on a nearby wall declared 'It's Derry, not Londonderry'.
"A bit of an academic quibble" a friend of mine remarked, and indeed that's how it seemed at the time.
Thirty-five years later, the rioting has receded but the quibble continues.
Nationalist members of the Derry City Council are exploring the possibility of changing the city's official name to Derry, claiming it will make the city easier to market. Unionists are resisting, seeing the change as an attempt to excise unionist culture.
Treatment of the past is an old quarrel in Ireland. When Nelson's Pillar was blown up in the 1960s, my boss at the time turned purple. 'Morons!' and 'Troglodytes!' were some of the politer words he used.
Ronnie Drew and the Dubliners, on the other hand, wrote a full-blooded ballad to celebrate the event, ending with the mocking chorus: 'Poor 'oul Admiral Nelson, too-ra-loo!'
A similar rumpus erupted in the mid-1990s when a statue of Queen Victoria was proposed for display in the grounds of University College Cork.
People like Professor John A Murphy insisted that it should be given an honoured place: not to do so would be to deny part of our history. Others volunteered to take a sledge-hammer to the Famine Queen.
We're not unique in our differences. In New Zealand a town called Gisborne is in the news. It got its name from William Gisborne, a third-rate Colonial Secretary in the 19th century, and now there are proposals to change its name.
Those opposed to change say only sign-writers and printers will benefit, those in favour want to know if the nonentity Gisborne ever set foot in this beautiful Antipodean town, and wouldn't an original Maori name like Turanga make more sense?
In India it's the same. Bombay has become Mumbai, Madras 'Chennai', and in 2001 the city of Calcutta became Kolkata.
South Africa has set up a Geographic Names Council, to review and change the names being used for cities, towns, rivers and mountains. Last year the council changed Pietersburg, a major city named after an Afrikaner general, back to its original name of Polokwane, meaning 'place of safety'. Whites marched in the streets to protest the change; some vandalised signs displaying the new name.
So who's right? On the face of it Professor Murphy's argument, and that of the Derry unionists, has an appeal. The past should be accepted, we should respect our history, we should be inclusive.
Only then we remember the toppling of statues to the likes of Saddam Hussein or Lenin: where were the Professor Murphys and the other inclusivists then? Like the rest of us, applauding the destruction of monuments to a repressive past.
And when the 26 counties won independence and the people of Dublin renamed their streets – O'Connell Street, Pearse Street, Cathal Brugha Street – it was accepted and approved as marking a new phase in Irish self-respect.
So before Gregory Campbell or Willie Hay of the DUP stand up and denounce as tyranny the efforts by nationalists to make official the name by which some 70% of citizens call their city, they might want to look around the world and note which way the wind is blowing. They might also want to consider the part names have played in Irish history.
The fact is, from Elizabethan times and earlier, England has used names to pin down its colonial possessions.
In more recent centuries we have the King's Hall and the Royal Victoria Hospital, Windsor House and Balmoral, and Prince Charles Way and a host of other examples – names given to streets and buildings and places so the people living in them may come to see themselves and their country as somehow lacking legitimacy and worth until linked with the greater power next door.
England's history in Ireland has been one of systematic repression and exploitation, sinking occasionally to acts of barbarism against those who attempted to resist this exploitation.
And when people who have been oppressed get the chance, they naturally want to remove the signs and symbols honouring those who oppressed them. That's what they're doing in New Zealand, India, South Africa, Iraq. That's what they plan to do in Derry.
Gregory Campbell and Willie Hay say they're worried unionist identity will be expunged. Stop worrying, lads.
Even if the official name does become Derry, there are enough symbols and relics of British hegemony in Belfast City Hall, Stormont, and yes, your native city, to provide those who love Mother Britain with a verbal security blanket for at least another 50 years.
