Can you make the hook_menu() item title different from the page title? I'm building a menu with hook_menu().

When you're building the array for this you specify a title, which is then passed to the page you call and becomes the page title. It's also the menu item's displayed name.

$items['somewhere/something'] = array(
 'title' =&gt; 'Something',
 'description' =&gt; 'something else',
);


This would generate a menu link called "Something", and the page title would be the same.
Is there a way to make the menu item's name one thing, but pass along a different title for the page?

I know I can use drupal_set_title() in the actual hook_page() function, but I'd have to perform an additional database pull to make that happen in this case, and I'd rather not do that.
No there's no way to do it with hook_menu().

The simplest way is what you suggested, using drupal_set_title() and the most efficient is what dobeerman suggested above: use phptemplate_preprocess_page() and alter $vars accordingly.

Honestly though, I would just use drupal_set_title() even if there is that extra db call you mentioned (unconfirmed). This is a tiny optimization and if performance is important to you, you should have some caching mechanism in place (Varnish, Boost, etc) and this extra call won't make a difference!