A state ban on naming roads, bridges and interstate off-ramps after living people?

You may as well try to outlaw barbecue.

Naming places after living people is part of South Carolina’s soul, some say.

“It’s like football on Friday nights,” says Bobby T. Jones, the 72-year-old czar of bestowing living peoples’ names upon the state’s byways and spans over creeks and rivers. “People kind of expect it and appreciate it.”

As chairman of a S.C. Department of Transportation board committee, Jones oversees 90 to 100 naming requests each year, most forwarded by legislators.

The recommendations of Jones’ committee nearly always are enacted by the seven-member Transportation board.

But that practice could come to a halt if some S.C. legislators, including House Speaker David Wilkins, have their way. They want to end the tradition of naming roads or bridges for the living.

These days, hundreds of S.C. byways bear the names of the living. The names range from the well known to those known only in their small communities. They include not a few public officials and state lawmakers, most of them men.

“Nothing has ever been negative about this until the Earle Morris thing,” says Jones, who has a bridge over the Wateree River, near his hometown of Camden, named for him. “Now what do they want to do? Kill tradition!”

Since former Lt. Gov. Morris was found guilty of securities fraud, the Legislature has passed resolutions directing his name be removed from the Upstate’s Earle Morris Highway. Now some legislators want to go further and stop naming state roads and bridges after the living.

“We’ve gone completely overboard,” says Speaker Wilkins, R-Greenville, whose bill to ban namings easily passed the House this week.

“Today, we passed six resolutions in the House to name roads after somebody,” Wilkins said Thursday. “I didn’t know any of them.”

Wilkins believes naming so many places after living people “devalues” the honor. Only after someone dies can their legacy be “legitimately evaluated,” he says.

However, Wilkins’ bill faces tough going in the Senate.

A similar Senate bill was stalled Thursday in that body’s Transportation Committee. Wilkins’ bill probably will go to that committee next week.

Transportation Committee chairman Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, a supporter of Wilkins’ bill, says he’ll do his best to get the bill to the Senate floor for full debate.

“You’re going to be running out of spots to name. The only thing we’ll have left are bridge underpasses.”

The topic is causing a heap of talk. Money is not an issue; each sign costs about $400.

Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, says naming has gone too far. “It’s proliferating like mushrooms. ... Everywhere you turn around there’s a new name popping up.”

Jones is unconvinced. He sees value in naming places after the living.

First, Jones says, it is inspiring to young people to know that if they do well, they might get something in their community named after them — even if they’re not famous statewide.

The honor also makes the honoree a better person, Jones says.

“When I ride over that bridge, that gives me some incentive to do right, obey the laws and the Ten Commandments,” he says, speaking of the bridge near Camden that bears his name. The honor makes him realize he’s a role model, he says.

Moreover, Jones says, worthy living people shouldn’t have to die to have something named after them.

Two in the Camden area whom Jones helped honor were former Gov. John West and Larry Doby, the first black Major League Baseball player to play in the American League. (Both died after being honored.)

Wilkins says there are no guidelines to decide whom, among the living, to honor. “It seems to me that the only criteria you have to meet is that you’ve got a buddy,” he says, referring to political connections.

But Jones says the DOT won’t approve a naming unless it’s obvious the honoree has broad backing from the community or local legislative delegation.

Jones says he gets excited thinking about naming places after people.

“Last year, we named a bridge over in McBee for the longest-serving magistrate in the state, Corkey Pate.”