Just the other day, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin stood up at the regular board meeting to say he wanted to remove Facebook zillionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s name from San Francisco General Hospital.

In Peskin’s view, Zuckerberg doesn’t deserve to have his name on the hospital because the company he created and runs had been roiled by a user privacy scandal and had hired a consulting firm that used tactics tainted with anti-Semitism.

The city-owned hospital was renamed Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital three years ago after the couple donated $75 million to it to fund critical equipment and technology. But the issue is not about money.

“This is about the integrity of institutions ... that are overwhelmingly funded by public money and taxpayer dollars,” Peskin said.

In other words, off with their names.

Like most San Franciscans, I had an instant reaction when I heard this idea: Oh, please. Haven’t we had enough of this? We got rid of Justin Herman Plaza and Columbus Day, and took Lech Walesa’s name off a little alley because he made some antigay remarks. Phelan Avenue is on the ropes, too, because James D. Phelan had anti-Asian views. And now Zuckerberg and the hospital.

But maybe Peskin is on to something. It’s a trend, a tidal wave. Let’s look at everything. Out with the old.

We’ll start with living people. Never name anything after a living soul. That takes care of Zuckerberg, but also Nancy Pelosi Drive, in Golden Gate Park, Willie Mays Plaza, Dianne Feinstein Elementary School, the Quentin L. Kopp Freeway, the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge and also the middle school that bears his name.

“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history,” Abraham Lincoln said. He’s the gold standard for names: Abraham Lincoln High School, Lincoln Way, Lincoln, Neb. So let us consider history.

UC Berkeley is about to jettison Boalt Hall, named for John Boalt, who backed Asian exclusion laws. Name changers are casting a gimlet eye on Joseph Le Conte, once a noted Berkeley professor and a president of the Sierra Club, but in another life a slave owner and a backer of the Confederacy. A campus building was named for him, also a mountain, a glacier, a canyon, a school and a street in Berkeley.

Berkeley, as historians know, was named for Bishop George Berkeley, a famous philosopher who said, “Westward, the course of empire takes its way.” He also was a slave owner.

Meanwhile, Stanford University is changing the name of Serra House, a campus residence named for Junipero Serra, chief architect of the California mission system, viewed as an organization that enslaved Indians.

That seems to be a bit self-righteous for a university founded by Leland Stanford, who, when he was governor of California in the 1860s, signed bills to fund military expeditions against Indians.

But never mind that. Let us head north, on Junipero Serra Boulevard, past Serramonte, the district, the shopping center and the car dealers, and on to San Francisco, named for Francis of Assisi, who, like Serra, is a Roman Catholic saint.

Isn’t this the city that removed an old statue in the Civic Center because it showed an American Indian cowering under the baleful gaze of a white pioneer and a Franciscan priest?

We find all sorts of problems in San Francisco. Streets named for George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and James Polk, among others. Washington owned slaves, Jackson warred against Indians, Polk started an unjust war against Mexico. There are all kinds of streets named for Spanish colonizers, Army generals such as Kearny and Grant, naval officers such as Montgomery and Sloat. There is even a Columbus Avenue. And, of course, a Zuckerberg hospital.

Let’s rename all these things. Let’s ditch Washington Square and Washington High School, rename the Mission District, Mission Street and Mission Bay. Let’s get rid of Arguello, and Sutter and Winfield Scott, who has two streets and a fort.

While we are at it, we should rename San Francisco, the city, the bay, the airport. We can do it in the way that has made this part of the world famous: First, hold endless meetings, then commission a thousand-page environmental impact report, then hold an election with ranked voting. New names could include Yerba Buena, Golden Gate City, or Frisco, after the Texas town. Or we could sell the naming rights to a big corporation, like Facebook.

I vote for leaving things alone. We cannot escape history.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf