Perhaps Dennis Puko was slaphappy Thursday night when he suggested a couple ideas for naming a consolidated Shenango Valley.

The Shenango Valley Intergovernmental Study Committee meeting attended by Puko and other committee members was, after all, in its third hour and moving along at a glacial clip. The committee has been studying the feasibility of making the five-community, 44,000-person Shenango Valley a single city since November 1999.

Puko's suggestions:

-- "We could sell the naming rights."

-- "We could come up with a name that looks good on a map, like 'Oh Wow.' "

Puko, the executive director of the Mercer County Regional Planning Commission, was joking. At least, he and some other committee members were laughing after the proposals were made.

But was it a laughing matter?

Oh Wow, Pa., might be a stretch, but selling naming rights is not uncommon these days.

This year, a Conshohocken, Pa.-based online company bought and bartered for the naming rights to a town of 345 people. In January, Halfway, Ore., agreed to take the name "Half.com" for one year in exchange for between $100,000 and $200,000 in computer equipment and an undisclosed amount of cash.

More than five dozen pro arenas and stadiums are named after corporations, including Pittsburgh's PNC Park and Heinz Field. H.J. Heinz Co. earlier this year agreed to pay the Steelers $57 million over the next 20 years for naming rights to the football stadium.

The symbolic deal price can be traced to the Pittsburgh-based food company's slogan, "57 Varieties." Reliant Energy Inc. was not symbolic last year when it agreed to shell out $300 million over 32 years for naming rights to a new sports and convention center in Houston.

The stadiums may not be towns, but the Pirates and Steelers both have much larger annual budgets than the Shenango Valley. The current budgets of the five valley communities add up to about $32 million. The Steelers doled out $61 million on salaries alone last year and the Pirates plan to spend $47 million on salaries this year.

The committee has been using the City of Shenango as a working name.

Committee member James A. DeCapua, who heads up the Government Structure and Legal Issues Subcommittee, said the official naming process is likely to include community input.

He said it has not been determined whether the name would be decided before or after Shenango Valley voters decide on the single-city question, at the earliest in 2003.