Is name change a bluff or for real?

Utah's status as the home of the full house — a reference to the large families so common here — could take on a new meaning.

The London-based PokerShare.com has offered the tiny southern Utah town of Bluff $100,000 to put its name on the town. Bluff, in southeast Utah near the borders of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, is home to just 285 residents.

"A hundred thousand dollars would go a long way in a town our size," Town Council Chairman Patrick McDermott says.

McDermott doesn't know how the offer will play with residents, but Friday he sent all an e-mail outlining the deal and asking for feedback. He'll present a formal proposal at a Nov. 2 meeting. The town is actually not officially a town but a special service area of San Juan County.

Some Bluff residents say changing the name would be an insult to town founders, while others say it won't draw any additional tourist business, which is the city's main economy.

"I'm a teacher, and for sure the school could use the money," says Robin Buran, who teaches first and second grade at Bluff Elementary School, which could conceivably become PokerShare.com Elementary. But Buran doubts her neighbors would want to rename the town.

"I can't see people going for it," she says. "There's a lot of history here."

The offer is without question a publicity stunt, said Darren Shuster, president of Pop Culture PR in Los Angeles. But the money is real and the underlying desire is to help a small community, he says.

"There's a million things to do for publicity. This one I can tie into something that gets a good result."

PokerShare.com considered two other communities: Sharer, Ky., and Bluff City, Ark. The first was so small it had no government entity to discuss the deal. The second rejected the offer on moral grounds.

Gambling is illegal in Utah, which might lead some to think the PokerShare.com offer would be a hard sell. But gambling isn't the issue, says Bluff resident Sam Cantrell. The name change "is just a stupid idea."

San Juan County Commissioner Lynn Stevens wonders who actually has the right to change the name. "Is it logical that the current residents of the city own the name?" he asks. Most residents of Bluff, he says, aren't descendants of the original "Hole-in-the-Rock" group that settled the town on April 6, 1880, he says. Most of the descendants have moved away to Blanding and Monticello.