A small village in New York State, 54 kilometers from the Canadian border, has been called 'Swastika' for more than a century.
A cyclist from New York City was riding through the area when he noticed the peculiar name of the town, made up of a few houses next to a road junction.
"I was shocked that the people who live here have not come together to choose a different name after 1945, if not before," noted the cyclist, Michael Alcamo, picks up the NBC chain.
It considers that the denomination is "disrespectful" towards the soldiers killed in World War II buried in the vicinity of the area.
In August Alcamo took his complaint to the City Council of Black Brook, the municipality of about 1,500 inhabitants on which Swastika depends, whose plenary session met on September 14.
Just five minutes were enough for the four councilors to unanimously reject the name change, NPR notes.
"We are sorry that there are people from outside this area who lack knowledge of the history of our community, who are offended when they see the name," Black Brook City Supervisor Jon Douglass said in an email.
"For the members of our community, which the plenary represents, it is the name that our ancestors chose."
But the matter has escalated to the state level.
Senator James Skoufis said he would propose a change in legislation to ban the use of the name.
"I imagine that the debate would have turned out very differently if one of the members of the Municipal Council was Jewish," he wrote in a tweet on September 24.
The name of the place predates the rise of the Nazi Party, which chose the swastika or swastika as its symbol.
The municipal supervisor notes that the name was adopted before World War II, and that it was taken directly from the Sanskrit word for 'well-being'.
Douglas adds that this is not the first time the name has attracted attention.
"Some of the residents who lived in that area fought in the war and refused to change the name just because Hitler tried to sully the meaning of swastika," he says.
The cyclist who denounced the name has been disappointed by the reaction of the city.
"I did not expect such a fast and unanimous vote to reject the proposal," he commented.
He just wanted, he says, for more people to discover the natural area of the Adirondacks, where Swastika is located, for its beauty and its history, something that he says conflicts with the current meaning of the swastika.
Another small place in North America changed the same name, Swastika, to "Brilliant" in 1954, and this is how the population of the State of New Mexico is known today.
In the US there is also a Swastika Lake, in Wyoming, and a mountain with the same name, in Oregon.
In neighboring Canada, there is also another Swastika, in the province of Ontario, with a train station of the same name.