THE ROVING EYE.

MILLENNIUM hype may have largely faded from the media headlines and elsewhere, but it lives on in local company names.

According to the L.A. City Clerk's tax and permit division, 149 companies in the city of L.A. alone have been registered with names starting with "millennium" or "millenium" (for the orthographically challenged), and many of them since Jan. 1, 1999.

They include beauty salons, a loose-diamond wholesaler, thrift shop, clinical laboratory, cargo and textile concerns, real estate brokerages and venture capital firms. Several owners said they wanted to convey the idea of progress and being forward-looking.

"We've got a future-oriented business. We had no idea it would be so popular," said Eric Moore, who came up with Millennium Advisors MSN for his real estate-telecom consulting company last year. "The thing that burst my bubble was driving down Lincoln and seeing Millennium Carwash."

Greg Herweg, owner of Millennium Imaging in Century City, said he's not too concerned about the name growing stale -- at least not for a few years.

"It made sense because it was on the tip of every one's tongue. You still turn on the TV and people are referring to the millennium," said Harweg.

One business decided to chuck the name altogether. Millennium Gifts christened itself in 1997, when the name "was a lot more original," but changed late last year to Presents of Mind, said Sharen Saedi, a gift buyer for the company, which sells thematic boxes.

"As we got closer to the millennium, it got crazy. With all the hype, it was not sounding right," Saedi said. "People thought we only sold millennium paraphernalia. We spent so much time explaining we don't do this or that."