Twin Rivers High School and Mechanicsville Middle School.

Those are the names a Hanover County school renaming committee have recommended to replace the Confederate names of the former Lee-Davis High and Stonewall Jackson Middle schools.

The recommendations, which will be up for final approval Sept. 16 by the Hanover School Board, were announced Tuesday following roughly three weeks of input from county residents.

The committee, made up of students, parents and community members, selected the names to reflect the county itself, while following School Board policy in not naming the schools after any people, living or deceased, according to a Hanover County Public Schools news release.

“Twin Rivers pays homage to the Pamunkey and Chickahominy rivers, which provide the natural boundaries for the school community,” the news release read. “Mechanicsville is also in line with School Board policy and reflects the geographical location served by the school and is easily identifiable to anyone in the Mechanicsville community.”

The committee received more than 3,000 suggestions for new names for the schools, ranging from names tied to local history to the state tree and flower. The committee narrowed it down to 14 names for each school, with those names submitted to residents in a poll.

Based on the poll results, the committee then chose three finalists for each school, which were then submitted to the public in a second poll that closed Sept. 3. Those names were Creek Run, Willow Branch and Mechanicsville for the middle school and Clearview, Mechanicsville and Twin Rivers for the high school.

The Hanover School Board voted 4-3 on July 14 to rename the schools and their mascots to eliminate ties to the Confederacy. Robert N. Barnette Jr., president of the Hanover Branch NAACP, expressed his approval during a telephone interview Tuesday night of how the committee’s final two recommended names follow School Board policy and lack connection to or veneration of the Confederacy.

“I think our ancestors will rest easy now that our Black and brown kids don’t have to go to schools that were named for people who held our ancestors in captivity and slavery,” said Mr. Barnette, who has been one of the most consistent critics of the schools’ former names.

The Hanover NAACP filed a federal lawsuit last year seeking to have the Confederate names eliminated.

A separate school-based process to select new mascots will take place once the new names have been approved, according to officials. Details on that process will be available later.