If Industrial Boulevard becomes Eddie Bernice Johnson Parkway, Dallas will be breaking with precedent in at least one significant way:

Ms. Johnson, a Democratic congresswoman, is very much alive.

The city code says roads are not to be named for people until they've been dead at least two years. The idea is that the honor recognizes the accomplishments of a lifetime – something hard to assess, perhaps, while the meter is still running.

However, the code also says the City Council can waive the must-be-planted rule if, by a three-quarters vote, it decides that doing so would be in the public interest.

On June 25, the council is to select a new name for Industrial Boulevard. Eddie Bernice Johnson Parkway was one of six names recommended this week by the council's Trinity River committee. (The other finalists are César Chávez Boulevard, Riverfront Boulevard, Trinity Lakes Boulevard, Trinityview Boulevard and Waterfront Boulevard.)

Ms. Johnson's name was suggested because of her work to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds for improvements along the Trinity River, which Industrial parallels.

The congresswoman said she's honored, "but I am in no way involved with the naming process. I trust that the people of Dallas and the Dallas City Council will choose the best name in the coming weeks."

The council will pick a name after residents have had a chance to state their preferences by voting online during the last week of May.

Paul Nelson, chief planner in the subdivision section of the city's Development Services Department, said he knew of no city street that had been named for a living person.

"It would certainly be uncommon," he said. "Usually, it's in honor of someone who is deceased – maybe a pastor, or a longtime teacher, something of that sort."

The City Council, he said, did waive the two-year waiting period for the Rev. E.K. Bailey of Concord Missionary Baptist Church in southern Dallas. Dr. Bailey, a revered figure in the black church, died in 2003 after a long battle with cancer. Seventeen months later, the street in front of his church, Boulder Drive, was rechristened Pastor Bailey Drive.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Nelson said, the council wanted to pay tribute to Jack Evans, a former Dallas mayor who was dying of cancer, by naming a street in the Arts District for him. Mr. Evans had been instrumental in putting together the district.

But at the time, the code didn't allow for waiver of the dead-two-years rule. So, Mr. Nelson said, the council instead had a plaque placed in the Arts District in honor of the former mayor, who died in 1997. In 2000, a three-block stretch of Fairmount Street was renamed Jack Evans Street.

State highways – distinct from city streets – can be named for living people, by an act of the Texas Legislature. That's how we got the Bush Turnpike.

Legislators voted in 1995 to name the road for the first President Bush. Today, it is operated as a toll road by the North Texas Tollway Authority.

Another state highway to honor someone prior to death is the C.F. Hawn Freeway, a stretch of U.S. Highway 175 southeast of downtown Dallas.

Charles F. Hawn was a businessman in Athens, Texas, who served as a state highway commissioner from 1957 to 1963. (U.S. 175 runs from Dallas to Athens.) The road was named in his honor in the early 1960s; he died in 1996, when he was 89.