Item Name Length oddities

Was running some custom code that created lots and lots of items in the Master Database. Now nevermind the reasoning for now, but the code needs to create items in a "flat" structure (as opposed to a folder-based hierarchical one) and some of those names can turn out to be fairly long. Wasn't long before I encountered this one:

An item name can not be more than 100 characters in length at Sitecore.Data.Items.ItemUtil.AssertItemName(String name) at Sitecore.Data.DataManager.AssertItemName(String itemName) at Sitecore.Data.DataManager.AddFromMaster(String itemName, ID itemID, ID masterID, Item parent) at Sitecore.Data.Items.Item.Add(String name, MasterID masterID)

Now, ok... I can understand the fact that there HAS to be some sort of limit imposed on Item Name length. What eludes me though, is the "100 character" limit, when the database looks like this: I looked around, and this length isn't configurable anywhere I can locate (in Sitecore 5.1.x atleast).