Karen Meinzen McEnerny spent years thinking about the little stream that murmurs through the backyard of her Sandy Springs home. Hot afternoons, she'd plop in its silver depths and wonder: Did this little slice of paradise have a name? And what about the other creeks that trickled through her north Fulton community?

They should have names soon. Federal officials are standing by to give their stamp of approval to 11 creeks that run past and under Sandy Springs homes and businesses.

Bob Andres/AJC (ENLARGE)

A nameless creek runs behind Sandy Springs Councilwoman Karen Meinzen McEnerny's home.

And the name of the creek behind McEnerny's house? McEnerny, a member of the Sandy Springs City Council, said it's ... but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Keep reading.

Last year, McEnerny and a curator at the historical agency Heritage Sandy Springs visited the Atlanta History Center's archives. Employees brought them aged maps that depicted Sandy Springs decades before the June 2005 vote that incorporated the north Fulton community. They leaned over the sheets, squinting at the faint lines where long-ago surveyors sketched creeks. Most of the creeks, they saw, bore no names.

Enter the good folks of Sandy Springs and the enterprising students of the Lower School of Holy Spirit Preparatory.

In May, people attending the Sandy Springs Festival, that annual celebration of all things Sandy Springsian, were encouraged to select names for the streams.

The names, McEnerny said, came in a flood at a booth set up to solicit stream names. Some submissions were whimsy — Rattlesnake Creek, anyone? — while others were rooted in the region's history. Nesbitt Ferry Creek, for example, was a reminder of a ferry that once operated in the area. A panel composed of members from the historic group, the City Council, the Sandy Springs Conservancy and other groups would make the final choices.

"It was really a wonderful thing," McEnerny said.

At about the same time, the kids at the Holy Spirit's Lower School, grades k-6, were taking a hard look at the creek that winds past the athletic field behind their school. One class took water samples, measuring the oxygen levels in the water, and made a happy discovery: It was good stuff. Others looked in history books, trying to discern a name.

They came up with one, too. Fifth-graders Carson Hooper, Angela Dale and Joe Janeczko were probing in an aged history book when they came across a photo of their school, taken about 40 years ago. Back then, they discovered, the school was called Liberty Guinn; Holy Spirit wouldn't occupy the building for decades to come.

They suggested a name for the creek, based on the name of the long-ago school. The student body voted to adopt the name and recommend it to the a larger panel that would make the final recommendations.

"I think that was pretty cool," said Carson, 11, an aspiring engineer with her eyes focused on Georgia Tech.

And that name is ...

Keep reading.

The feds get involved

More than 230,000 streams in the United States are named and featured on maps, according to the Board of Geographic Names. The panel, composed of representatives from an array of federal agencies, reviews requests from across the country to name everything from valleys to mountains. The board makes recommendations to the U.S. Geological Survey, which places the approved names on authorized maps.

Sandy Springs will have to propose its stream names to the USGS, which will forward them to the naming board. McEnerny has promised to do this.

After that, it should take about eight months before the city learns whether the government has OK'd those names, said Lou Yost, the Board of Geographic Names' executive secretary. The naming board, he said, would review the names, check with local officials and make sure that the monikers are appropriate.

What is the difference between a creek and a stream? Yost's shrug was so emphatic you could feel it through the phone.

"It depends on where you are," he said.

That brings us back to the backyards, culverts and parking lots of Sandy Springs, where creeks tumble, gurgle and temporarily vanish. Here are their suggested names:

• Obediah Creek

• Spalding Ridge Creek

• Nesbitt Ferry Creek

• Itawa Creek

• Spring Creek (once known as Mill Shoal Creek, based on 1911 records at the Atlanta History Center)

• Jett Creek

• Hunting Creek (the informal name given to a tributary called Cone Creek in a 1912 map)

• east and west branches of Ezzard Creek

• Liberty Guinn Creek

• Walhalla Creek

• Sandy Springs Creek

The creek that the school kids named? Liberty Guinn, of course.

And the one that keeps McEnerny cool on steamy afternoons? Liberty Guinn, again.

Now you can stop reading.