For 54 years, what many Johnstowners called their daily newspaper depended on family history.

Some said they read it in the Tribune.

Others read the same story in the same paper, which they called the Democrat.

Now, The Tribune-Democrat, its official name since 1952, when the afternoon Tribune merged with the morning Democrat, could become simply The Tribune. Newspaper officials are thinking of dropping Democrat as part of a major redesign that will roll out July 2, over the objections of some readers and employees who detect political overtones in the shift.

In a recent internal memo to Tribune-Democrat employees, publisher Chris Voccio listed several reasons in favor of changing the name, including an effort to cast off any appearance of political-party affiliation.

"The term Democrat means something very different today than it did in years gone by," Mr. Voccio wrote. "We are not a house organ for any political party, so why should we continue to use the name Democrat?"

In an interview Friday, Mr. Voccio downplayed the name change, saying it was "really not a political thing."

There has been confusion over the paper's name for years, he said, with many people calling it The Tribune out of habit, or as a kind of shorthand.

"We want to be what the readers call us," said Mr. Voccio, who came to The Tribune-Democrat two years ago from a paper in Greenville, Texas.

A decision about dropping Democrat has not been made, Mr. Voccio said, but will come sometime this week. Last week, focus groups looked over prototypes of the newly redesigned Tribune.

"They've not at all been remotely resistant to the name change," Mr. Voccio said.

According to Lee Wood, a journalism professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and former Tribune-Democrat staffer who now writes a monthly column for the paper, many modern-day newspapers' hyphenated names evolved from the "party press period," when they were closely allied with political parties.

"The Tribune always had a Republican viewpoint, and The Democrat always had a Democratic one," Mr. Wood said.

In the mid- to late 19th century, newspapers started abandoning such partisanship and embraced independent news coverage, which attracted more advertisers and a larger segment of readers. In many cases, their names remained as relics.

In the memo, Mr. Voccio wrote that dropping Democrat would be "returning to our ancestral name," not unheard of in the industry.

"We were, at one time, The Tribune, competing against The Democrat," he wrote. "That's why our building has the words 'The Johnstown Tribune' emblazoned across its front. When, in 1952, the two papers merged, it was decided to tie in the name Democrat to pacify the readers of The Democrat."

Harder to pacify could be some staffers at The Tribune-Democrat about this possible name change. There seems to be real confusion among employees about the perceived reasons for monkeying with an established brand name, as well as concern over the "loss of history" it represents.

"Our publisher definitely leans toward the right," said one staffer, who wished to remain anonymous.

"I think the word Democrat scares him," another said. "I feel like that's the whole push behind this."

In his memo, Mr. Voccio attributed much of the dissent to "emotionalism and imagined nostalgia," which "won't hold the weight of logic." He said only a couple of employees were really resistant to the change, and that's why he decided to leave it up to readers.

Community members and political observers offered split assessments of the name-change issue.

Robert Gleason, Cambria County's GOP chairman, had no reaction.

"I see it as a nonpolitical event," he said.

Cambria County Democratic Party Chairman Bill Joseph said he was "very surprised" to hear The Tribune-Democrat would even consider such a change.

"Boy, those Republican are taking over everything, aren't they?" he said. "How simple can we get in this country."

Mr. Joseph allowed that the paper's owners had "every right" to do whatever they want, but said he didn't think changing the name would help the paper's circulation, which is around 41,000 daily, and 43,000 on Sundays, according to Mr. Voccio.

Mr. Joseph pointed out that, in a county of 55,000 registered Democrats and 28,000 Republicans, "the Democrats are buying that paper."

"It's been in the area almost 100 years, for God's sake," he said. "For the last 50 years, it's been The Tribune-Democrat without any trouble, and The Tribune is the name that's out front."

There are hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers across the country that contain the names Democrat or Republican, and there is often little correlation between those names and the demographics and voting patterns of the areas they represent.

Many Democrat-named papers are in conservative states, most notably in the South, where Democrat harkened back to the defenders of the Confederacy, whose descendants later made a mass exodus to the GOP. And some Republican newspapers are historic fixtures in the communities of progressive blue states.

William J. Pape II, publisher of the Republican-American in Waterbury, Conn., said that, in Waterbury, Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans 2.5 to 1.

"We've got no intention of changing the name," said Mr. Pape, whose grandfather bought up The Republican in 1901, The American in 1923 and The Democrat in 1946. "My grandfather would roll over in his grave, because The Republican was always his favorite."

In the 1880s, he said, the newspapers were "party mouthpieces" closely allied with the political parties, but the Republican-American tries to remain balanced in its coverage. The editorial page is conservative, Mr. Pape said, as he is.

Mr. Pape e-mailed a copy of a letter written by his grandfather in December 1946 and published in his newspaper. It addressed the issue of such political affiliations:

"There was a time (it seems a century ago) when segments of a community could and would support in modest comfort newspapers which reflected their opinions or catered to their preferences, but that day has gone. Newspapers, especially in cities of this size, are supported by the entire community, or not at all. ... If there are fewer newspapers, they must be better and broader, less partisan, more community-minded. They must give every cause a hearing as of right. They must think for themselves and the public more broadly and more temperately."

Cambria County has traditionally been socially conservative, but in recent years, it has become more Republican in its voting patterns. The county went for George Bush in 2004, the first time in many years voters there had backed a Republican presidential candidate.

According to Mr. Voccio, The Tribune-Democrat's editorial page is "centrist," although some might call it conservative, which, he said, was probably a fair characterization.

"I don't think that our readers or people internally associate [the name] with having a political connotation," Mr. Voccio said. "The name of the newspaper is almost secondary."

More important is the rest of the redesign, which the paper has been hyping for weeks. Mr. Voccio said there would be more color and fewer stories jumping from page to page.

Mr. Wood, the journalism professor and columnist, compared dropping Democrat from the masthead to the rest of the redesign, which is to say, "decoration" and "window-dressing."

"It's like, do you put it in blue or red?" Mr. Wood said. "It is, in a way, very meaningless, kind of surface stuff, you know, veneer."

Still, he cautioned that readers often care very much about small changes. He talked about an old Tribune-Democrat feature called "The Wishing Well," which occupied space near the comics. In it, readers circled every fifth or sixth letter, and it would end up spelling out a message such as, "Have a Nice Day."

"We took it out because it was stupid, you know? And we got more calls and complaints about that than anything else we've ever done," Mr. Wood said. "If you start messing with the name, you're messing with the 'Wishing Well.' You don't do that stuff lightly."