There’s a new name for the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities of Saskatchewan.

The organization commonly known as SUMA has switched their name to Municipalities of Saskatchewan, a decision that was announced during their convention this past week in Regina.

President Gordon Barnhart said the name change has been in the works for a few years now.

He said they ran into some issues with the “urban” part of their former name.

“The federal government, and certainly eastern Canada, they define rural as anything under 100,000 people, so that means all of Saskatchewan is rural except for Regina and Saskatoon,” Barnhart said. “SUMA represented all of the towns, villages, resort villages, northern communities, as well as cities.”

He said the overall reaction has been generally positive.

“We’ve had one or two negative, but the big cities seem to be happy,” Barnhart said. “The north is very happy, they said ‘urban never applied to us in the north, and now we’re included,’ so we’re happy for that change as well.”