When you’re in the vicinity of Rockville Pike and Nicholson Lane in Montgomery County, where are you? Are you in White Flint? North Bethesda? Rockville? Any of the above, depending on your mood? Do you use the same name when you’re at the corner of Rockville Pike and Old Georgetown Road? These questions are at the heart of a quiet debate raging underneath the White Flint Sector’s very public planning process. It’s finally coming to a head as plan implementation marches forward and the naming of this “place” has become more urgent.

I purposely call this process one of “naming,” rather than “re-naming,” because it more accurately describes what’s happening here. Over the past several months, as executive director of the nonprofit Friends of White Flint, I’ve received waves of impassioned e-mails and calls from community members. Each begins with the same idea: “I’ve lived in this area for xx years, and I’ve always called it. . . . ” Everyone with whom I speak is deeply invested in the name they call this place; they just don’t agree on what that name is.

This is an area where the Rockville Whole Foods is located in North Bethesda Market, across the street from White Flint Mall, which has a Kensington address.

In 2007, when the county’s planning department identified White Flint Metro Station as the epicenter for its latest transit-oriented development, the sector plan took that name. Everything about this huge urban district, only about 10 percent of which is mall property, has bucked the norm of our county’s development principles. The sector will follow global trends that move away from needing a car for every single trip and, instead, will embrace all forms of mobility. This “place” — close to a third of which was surface parking lots — will become a denser, more walkable community, the scope of which has never been seen in Montgomery County. Nearly everything about this plan has been a unique undertaking; it’s no surprise that finding the right name will be, too.

The name we seek is more for marketing and business purposes than for writing on a mailing label. It’s an umbrella term for the many different and unique neighborhoods sprouting up within, such as Pike and Rose and North Bethesda Market. Great effort was put into creating a cohesive district in which every property contributes its piece to the larger puzzle. A name will be the capstone of that work.

This month, the community was invited to a forum to help decide this name. The options ranged from the more organic to the less, but all were developed through intense market research. Forum participants were people who live and work in and around the sector, as well as people who own property here — the same range of stakeholders that has worked closely together to ensure this district will reach its ultimate potential. In doing so, we’ve taken ownership of creating a name that will attract a new generation of residents and active stakeholders and reflect the scope of our exciting undertaking.

— Lindsay Hoffman , Rockville