In all the celebration over Kodak's $10 million gift for the Eastman Theatre last week, some blockbuster news slipped under the radar.

The University of Rochester is changing the theater's name. It'll be called Kodak Hall.

OK: Its full name will be Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. I guess that's supposed to make the name change palatable. But it doesn't. The theater is too significant, and has too much history, for us to change its name cavalierly.

Kodak's gift is a fabulous thing. But there's a difference between giving a gift and buying naming rights, and this feels very much like buying naming rights.

Renaming the War Memorial "Blue Cross Arena" was bad enough. Changing "Eastman Theatre" to "Kodak Hall" is a sacrilege.

Kodak does itself no favors by changing the name of a cherished community institution. Neither does the University of Rochester.

The name change won't happen until the big expansion and renovation at the theater are complete - in late 2009 or early 2010 - so it's not too late for Kodak officials to change their mind.

And maybe nobody cares but me. The Eastman School says that "the Eastman Theatre" is much more than the performance hall - the theater -so it's perfectly appropriate for the performance hall to get a different name. But to me, "the Eastman Theatre" is the theater, that big room with the stage and the murals and the chandelier. And I don't like calling it Kodak Hall. (If somebody besides me does care, maybe you'll pass around petitions. Write letters. Stage little protests in front of the Eastman School and Kodak.)