By: Robert J. Terry

I wonder if Baltimore’s having thoughts about being the “serious city.”

That’s the name local Google czar Tom Loveland gave Baltimore and its grassroots effort to become home to an ultra-fast broadband network built by Google at a cost of an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars.

Actually, I’m pretty sure Loveland, Dave Troy, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and other local organizers aren’t having any second thoughts at all. They’ve prided themselves on avoiding stunts in their quest to capture the attention of the Web giant, instead relying on reams of data and rounding up sober testimonials from a who’s who of elected officials and business and nonprofit leaders.

Still, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of jealousy over today’s April Fool’s Day turn of events: Google renames itself “Topeka” in a tip of the hat to the Kansas city that said it would name itself after the Mountain View, Calif.-based company in a bid for its broadband affections.

It’s of course been reported across the country and locally.

Google also blogged about it.

“We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.”

And another Baltimore institution made national news today for an April Fool’s stunt, this one also involving a name.

This all makes me think I should change my name. How does “Steve Jobs” grab you?