PROVIDENCE, R.I. — As the Jewelry District starts to take shape as the city’s newest neighborhood, it is facing an adolescent identity crisis.

What should it be called?

Economic development officials who are banking on the area to help anchor the state’s innovation economy insist it should be known as the “Knowledge District.” That way, outsiders are clear what happens there.

But some of the high-tech entrepreneurs and life-science types who work there prefer the historical images that the old moniker, the “Jewelry District”, conjures up. It’s a nod to the manufacturing tradition the area was once known for and it forges a connection between the past and the future.

Plus they say, it sounds pretty hip. And that’s part of the image the area is trying to cultivate as it works to lure young, creative types with big ideas.

“There has been a lot of conversation about whether to stick with the historical approach in calling it the Jewelry District, and a case has been made by a variety of people for taking a more formal approach, calling it the Knowledge District,” said city Communications Director Karen Watts.

Laurie White, president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, argues in favor of the change. In marketing to newcomers from out of state, she says, it is critical to give them an easily identifiable picture of the area between downtown Providence and the city’s hospitals. Including the word knowledge suggests an innovative place with emerging companies and lots of young people. That’s a powerful selling point, she says.

“Calling it the Jewelry District points to something [in the past] that was great, but it doesn’t look forward,” White said. “And if someone is looking for artisan activities, they aren’t going to find them there.”

Not everyone agrees.

“Think of the success of the Meatpacking District and Soho [neighborhoods in New York City]. People love the idea of being tied to something historic,” said Colin Kane, principal at The Peregrine Group, an East Providence real estate firm that has done work in the district.

The cool factor aside, there can be a downside to the more intellectual title. “The Knowledge District might create an air of esoteric and ivory tower images that we don’t want right now,” said Max Winograd, whose company, NuLabel Technologies, got its start in a Jewelry District incubator and is now located in Pawtucket.

The point is to attract fledgling companies, not intimidate them, he said.

No one can quite pinpoint when the Knowledge District name cropped up, although it appears to have taken root last year, in discussions involving the future of the knowledge economy — a catch-all phrase for 21st-century ventures where the product is more intellectual than physical.

City marketing materials use the knowledge title, though Watts says the consensus is to let the long-term identity develop organically over time.

The naming question gained more urgency late last month when Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced his plans to create an “Innovation District” on the waterfront in South Boston. The concept is similar to Rhode Island’s and will no doubt ratchet up the competition to lure new companies. Menino is sweetening the deal by awarding $25,000 to businesses that locate there.

To make Rhode Island’s district stand apart, state Economic Development Corporation Director Keith Stokes said it would be wise to play up the connections between the old and new. “That’s what really ties it together here,” Stokes said. “Once we were manufacturing materials. Today we are manufacturing ideas.”

cneedham@projo.com