How do I remove the ".local" suffix from my computer's hostname?

I used to have a Mac hostname as simply "macpro" under Snow Leopard. After doing a clean installation of Lion, then a migration to restore my files, it's now called "Georges-Mac-Pro".

What is the current recommended way to change the hostname (preferably to something that does not include ".local")? From some googling, it appears that $ hostname macpro won't stick permanently.

Just put macpro back in the sharing field.

The .local is there to catch fully qualified domain names and help with bonjour - you can't avoid that, but it won't show up anywhere but that pane.

The submenu Sharing under System Settings is the preferred way to change the hostname of your machine.

The .local domain simply means that the IP address will be resolved by the Bonjour ZeroConf service instead of DNS.