A Change.org petition asking officials to rename Nashville International Airport as Dolly Parton International Airport passed 85,000 signatures on August 26, 2026, one day after Parton died at her home in Nashville at age 80. The petition added more than 23,000 signatures in a single day.
A petition from 2025, revived in a day
The petition is not new. Nashville residents Lydia Popovich and Dan Dion created it on January 21, 2025, as a counter to an effort in the Tennessee legislature to rename the airport for President Donald Trump.
Republican Rep. Todd Warner filed that measure, House Bill 217, with a cost estimate of about $10.3 million. It drew a negative recommendation from the House Naming and Designating Committee and did not advance.
The Parton petition reached roughly 50,000 signatures by April 2025 and then went quiet. Her death on August 25 revived it overnight. The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority lit its parking garages pink in her honor through the weekend, calling her a Tennessee legend.
Organizers point to Parton’s decades of philanthropy in the state, including her Imagination Library book program, and to her global profile. The petition carries the slogan “We could all be Departin’ from Parton.”
Warner, who sponsored the Trump renaming bill, now says he will carry the Parton version. He told WKRN that constituents had raised Parton’s name during his earlier effort and that the calls and emails increased sharply after her death. No bill has been filed.
How an airport actually gets renamed
Renaming a US airport is a local and state matter, not a federal one. The Federal Aviation Administration does not approve or reject a new name; it just updates charts and databases once a change is made.
In Tennessee, the airport authority board can rename its own facility. State legislators have separately tried to force the issue through law, the route the Trump bills took.
The three-letter code travelers see on a boarding pass usually survives a rename. Nashville’s BNA stands for Berry Field, Nashville, after the 1930s airfield on the site, and airports rarely give up a familiar identifier.
Washington National kept DCA when Congress renamed it Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in 1998, and Houston Intercontinental kept IAH when it became George Bush Intercontinental in 1997.
A code only changes if the airport asks for it. Palm Beach International in Florida became President Donald J. Trump International Airport in 2026, and its code switched from PBI to DJT that August.
Most airports named for people honor politicians or military figures, from John F. Kennedy to Charles de Gaulle to Indira Gandhi. Airports named for entertainers are rare, with Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International among the few. That contrast is part of why the Parton campaign spread so fast.
The airport in question
BNA handled a record 26.7 million passengers in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2026, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority. A rename would make it one of the largest airports in the world named for an entertainer rather than a politician or a general.
Reality check
Petition signatures are not legislation. As of August 27, 2026, no renaming bill has been introduced, the airport authority has not scheduled a vote, and Governor Bill Lee has not weighed in. This is a public campaign, not a pending decision.
Sources and references used for research and fact-checking.
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