Using a custom name for root device in grub

I'm working on old distro ( slackware 8.1 ) using a kernel 2.4.37.9 and I have the following problem.

I want to use a custom name for boot device, say for example /dev/root1, which can replace the standard ide device ( /dev/hdc1 ).

In the standard case I have

  title Linux-2.4.37.9 hdc
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.37.9 ro root=/dev/hdc1 console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0 apm=off

I wanto to replace it as show belowe:

  title Linux-2.4.37.9 ccl-Test
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.37.9 ro root=/dev/ccl1 console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0 apm=off

Both /dev/hdc1 and /dev/ccl1 are block device with major/minor 22,1 See here:

# ls -la /dev/hdc1 /dev/ccl1
brw-rw----    1 root     disk      22,   1 Jun  9  2002 /dev/hdc1
brw-rw-rw-    1 root     root      22,   1 Feb 20 15:04 /dev/ccl1

In the standard case the boot works well while in te second case, when I'm using the dev /dev/ccl1, I got the following error :

VFS: connot open root device "ccl1" or 00:00
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00

I also added an initrd which set the real-root-dev

echo 0x2201 > /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev

but I got the same error , with a different device value

VFS: connot open root device "ccl1" or 22:01
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 22:01

I also tried to use the device ccl1 as a simple mount when the PC is already running and it works, see belowe

# mount -o -ro -t ext2 /dev/ccl1  /mnt/tmp
# df
Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
LABEL=Flash-Root        242678    169769     65399  73% /
/dev/shm                452620      9308    443312   3% /var
/dev/ccl1               242678    169769     65399  73% /mnt/tmp

Any suggestions ?