Over the past two weeks, San Francisco Recreation and Park has received 4,263 submissions on what the park formerly known as the Great Highway should be named.

Those nominations provide a window into the hopes, malice, and outright nerdery that San Francisco’s newest and, as of press time, most controversial city park has inspired. Take a look at the park’s over 2,000 name suggestions — some likely, others extremely not so.

In the lead…

The top suggestions are “Ocean Beach Park” (submitted 178 times) and “Snowy Plover Park” (named for the adorable, federally threatened shorebirds that skitter along the Ocean Beach eating kelp flies when they aren’t migrating). “You can always find snowy plovers chasing the waves, and the waves chasing the snowy plovers,” wrote one submitter.

Coming in hot next, “Parky McParkface” — an allusion to the time a British research agency let the public vote on the name of its newest vessel, and “Boaty McBoatface” won overwhelmingly — rounded a distant third at 86 votes.

We have come to praise Joel Engardio and to bury him

District 4 supervisor Joel Engardio, now facing a recall for his co-sponsorship of Prop. K , the ballot measure that closed a portion of the Great Highway to create the new park, was name-checked often — 110 times, to be precise.

A few suggested naming the park after Engardio, in commendation for his “courage to stand up for what he believes” in the face of a not-inconsiderable number of angry constituents (Prop. K was overwhelmingly voted down in the west side of the city, and it was opposed strongest in the areas where Engardio formerly had the most support). “Why not name it after the person who made it happen?” one member of the pro-Engardio camp wrote, suggesting “Joel Engardio Park.”

A significantly larger number (about 40) had a different suggestion: “Recall Joel Engardio Park.” If all the submissions mentioning Engardio in a negative light (“Engardio’s folly,” “Engardio’s boondoggle,” “Engardio’s Waterloo,” “Traitor Joel’s,” and “Fuck Joel Engardio” among them) were added together, they would be at least in fourth place.

Fight the real enemy (the park)

At least 170 submissions, without mentioning the supervisor or the recall, cut to the chase and expressed frustration with the new park.

They call me sand

About 240 submissions honor Ocean Beach’s iconic sand dunes, which used to cover a significant portion of San Francisco , and often defied attempts to keep corral them in a specific area . Among the suggestions: “Sunset Dunes Park,” “the Dunes,” “Sand Dunes Park,” or, more plainly, “Sand Francisco.”

One voter (Ruthie, age 9) nominated “Dune Tansy Park,” in honor of the globulous yellow dune flower found on dunes along the Pacific coast, on the grounds that “there are lots of dune tansies and that is a native plant and also because there is the word ‘dune’ and there are lots of dunes.”

Land acknowledgement

At least 180 submissions sought to name the new park after the Ramayttush Ohlone people, who lived on the San Francisco Peninsula for thousands of years .

Keep it simple

Many of the nominations, pragmatically, suggested names close to what is already in use, among them Ocean Beach Park, Ocean Park, Sunset Park, or — smushing together past and future nomenclature — the Great Parkway or Great Highway Park.

Neighborhood nicknames

About 120 submissions referenced the history of the Sunset, Richmond, and Parkside neighborhoods, which border the new park.

“I like that the neighborhoods have sorta always had a bit of an underdog vibe to them. Many scoff at the fog, cold, and the dunes,” one nominator wrote. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city’s westernmost neighborhoods were considered the “outside lands” and deemed desolate and uninhabitable. “Reclaiming the old name ‘Outside Lands’ as a positive,” the nominator continued, “would be a great way to connect our neighborhood’s history to the future.”

Another 160 submissions or so seek to commemorate Playland at the Beach , a historical amusement park along the Great Highway which opened in the 1920s and was demolished in 1972. Some 60 suggested “Playland Park,” and another 36 proposed “Playland at the Beach.”

“My mom (who is 101) lived as a young, single, and pretty gal through the war years in San Francisco,” wrote one commenter, “She ice skated at Sutro , ate ravioli at the really original Original Joe’s, had cocktails at Top of the Mark with guys leaving for the Pacific theater.”

By the time they were born, the nominator continued, Playland was “a rundown shell with a few bumper cars where once it was a vibrant place everyone came to for fun and sea air. So it makes perfect sense to resurrect history for a wonderful new place to play in the city.”

A virtual community meeting took place on Tuesday, March 18 at 6 p.m. to review and narrow down the names. From March 20 to April 2, the public will weigh in to determine the name among the finalists.