Why I want to name my home

[pegkerr]

I posted this in a comment to llinos, who wondered aloud, most reasonably, whether it might in fact be a tad pretentious to name a house that already has a perfectly serviceable house number. Thought I'd make it a separate entry to explain my thinking a bit to all.

Well, I see your point, if the only purpose of the house name was to identify it for the postman who delivers the mail. If utilitarianism were the only cause, you are absolutely right, there is no "need" to name my house. But that's not why I want to come up with the perfect name.

To me, a home is more than just a house, if you understand me. I want to name the home. The Victorians understood a home as a sacred place; English landscape designers talked about the "genius of the place." I want to name my home because I want to put into a beautiful word, or two or three, what my home means to my family. Not just me, you understand, so I shouldn't choose a name that only I like, or is significant to only me. It should be right for all four of us. Which is why if Rob doesn't like it, it can't be used.

Don't you feel that your home is more than just the wood or bricks or stone that you live in, the place you sleep and where you store your clothes? It's where I garden, and where I dream, and where I write, and where I brought my babies home and started teaching them about the whole wide world. It's where I have my liveliest fights and most loving moments with my husband. It's my home. It is extremely important to me. I write about my home here all the time because it's in the background of all my stories about my family, and one odd thing I've noticed about my writing is that I can't write about a character freely and fully unless I've figured out the character's name.

Edited to add: and of course, a name would have to include what is important about the house to the other members of the family, too. Therefore a "writing name" per se wouldn't be quite right, because that would be naming it just my home instead of our home.

And yeah, some of the names I suggested earlier were derivative. Yeah, yeah, okay, my bad. I was just struck by some of them. *Is mildly embarrassed now* But I wouldn't have used one of them unless it was right. And these suggestions so far, apparently, are not right. So, I will wait for something original and just right to come along.

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Heart's Rest?

[camfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Pen Station :-)

Possibly drivel

[amandageist.livejournal.com]

Can you impose a name on it? Maybe it hasn't spoken to you yet. We've had pets for weeks before they told us their names. Your writing, you are the sole creator (although I know, they do take on a life of their own). My point is, you provide the name to add life. With your house, the life is already there, and not solely stemming from your creativity. The sum is greater than the parts; those parts include other individuals; and maybe the character of your home/house needs discovering, not developing.

If that made *any* sense. It just feels like you're brainstorming a label, not introspecting for an identity.

~Amanda

Re: Possibly drivel

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

We've had pets for weeks before they told us their names.

I got my dog at an animal shelter as a puppy. She and her seven or eight littermates were named after the cast of Frasier. The name they gave her was "Roz". Well. I went through name after name to try and give her just the right one (read: the one I wanted for her). We tried Emma, and Molly, and Martha, and all sorts of names. She's eight years old now. Her name? Roz. Apparently she liked it, and it suited her, even if I have never seen a single episode of Frasier.

The lovely creature in my icon is Rhett, my cat, who also came with his name and wouldn't let me change it.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

I do feel all those things, but for me it all wraps up in the word "home." That's it's name, and it's not the name of the house, it's the name of the whole package. I got off the plane last night and drove away singing "Home, home, home." I can't imagine giving the place a name that would move the heart the way the word "home" does.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I understand this completely. When (or if) I have my own home again, I want to name it--and it has to be the right name.

When my mother back to Block Island, where she was born and lived until age 13, an old family friend who lived there said to her, "Why do you want to move back to this windswept little island?". Her house, ever since, has been known as "Windswept". It's little things like this that can inspire a name.

Maybe you just need to wait for the house to tell you. It could be it's like the couple who try for ten years to have a baby, and when finally they give up and start thinking about adopting, they find out they're pregnant. This also happened with my mother, and songdog was the result. *g*

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Er, That's back to Block Island. :/

[phoenixw.livejournal.com]

I think homes, like cars and guitars, name themselves. You're right to wait for it to come along. When something fits, you know it.

I've lived in three named homes. One was named for the SCA household that lived there - House Kibbitzer. Another was named for the band that lived there - Seilidhe Court. One was named Kensington House, for the street it is on.

It's a very handy way to quickly refer to the home. When I talk to my friends about Seilidhe Court, everyone knows exactly which house I'm referring to (not "that house on Capitol Hill" or by house number, which god knows I've forgotten). As a side note, if any house deserved to be named, that one certainly did, lovely old thing that it was.

And there's a common wisdom that says that for women, the house symbolically represents the body. So having a name seems very natural to me.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

My problem is that the things I name never stick. I am immensely fond of my laptop and my car, for instance, but when I try to name them, I never use the name; I wind up saying "the car" or "the laptop", not "Red Rover" or "amanuensis". (Heck, I've been known to say "the cat", especially when it's "PLEASE let the cat out now.")

For me, inanimate objects don't go with proper nouns. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't care if they were derivative if you liked them. I mean, naming pets after favourite book characters is also derivative, but it tells other people a lot about your interests, and nobody complains, "Oh, I can't believe you named your dog Ender/Frodo/Nero/Pippin/etc." Bah to the naysayers! Bah, I say.

I could on and on about houses--I have a house fetish, and my boyfriend refers to architecture and decorating magazines as "house porn for Lis". So I totally understand why you'd want to name the haus--or really, naming anything that means much to you.

Can't talk much longer unfortunately--at lunch. Best of luck thinking up a name.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

House names in England stay with the building, lasting through many generations of owners. Then again, just because you're naming a house in English and considering some similar names doesn't mean you're actually doing the same thing.

One thing a house name is useful for fannishly is to make it more convenient to refer to -- "Dreampark" is shorter than "Sharon and Richard's place"; and to me feels less off-putting to outsiders, but that may be randomly variable. (And fans often want to be inclusive, *not* just call it "Sharon's" or "Richard's", and often don't have a common last name to refer to.)

I've named all four of my houses, but only one of them was much used -- Finagle's Freehold, for the first one on 28th St. That name stuck through Joel's ownership and into when it was rented to fans until it was torn down. But I don't think anybody but me really remembers the house names for Hudson MA ("East Minneapolis") or Minnehaha Ave. ("Castle Terrabit"). I have heard/seen some other people refer to the current house as "Blaisdell Poly".

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

We call it "Blaisdell Poly," or "Blaisdell," all the time.

B

[chamisa.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with what has already been said--who cares if anyone else thinks the names you've come up with so far are 'derivative' or if anyone thinks it's a tad pretentious. It only matters what you and family think. :-)

I completely understand your desire to name your home and I think it's wonderful that you're trying to come up with one. Maybe you do need to have the house tell you. Maybe it's trying to figure out what it wants to be called, right now.

I really believe that houses can take on some of the emotions, memories, experiences of its previous occupants. Certainly that belief was reinforced for my husband and I recently when we were house hunting--some houses we'd walk in immediately had a very 'wrong' vibe, a creepy strange vibe, like you just didn't want to be in it at all. Others had an immediate welcoming vibe, and we knew that we could live there and be happy. The house we bought, which I'm still trying to find a name for, had one of those good happy vibes, which is one reason we bought it, of course.

This reminds me that the house we just sold did have a name--we started calling it "Chez Hedoniste", because it truly was the house of hedonism, especially when friends stayed over and visited. We seemed to be the waystation for a lot of traveling friends, and we happily accomodated them with comfy beds, excellent food, plenty of lounging about opportunities, a jacuzzi tub, you name it. So our friends took to it as well and would call to make 'reservations' at Chez Hedoniste when they knew they were coming to town. :-)

A house like yours, which has had so many years of life lived inside it, certainly must have many 'memories' and it sounds like they're good ones. It's probably silly of me to think this, but I imagine it must be happy that you're in it, your little daughters are happily decorating a new Christmas tree in it, and that you're trying to come up with a suitable name for it. It will come to you eventually.

[beadslut.livejournal.com]

Our house has been known to the immediate family as the "Little House on the F-ing Prairie", because we had tumbleweed issues when the development was first going up, and I had never lived anywhere other than in the city.

The rest of the people we know refer to it by our names, "so-and-so's house", which suits me better, because I can take that with me when I move. Wherever I live, it will be home, and I doubt anyone coming after us would care what we called the house.

IMO, naming a house is for entailed estates.

[sylvertongue.livejournal.com]

I've been watching the naming thoughts with great interest.

I'm one of those people who names everything, and then uses the name. In fact, my names stick so much that everyone around me picks them up, too - which is quite a feat when you've got friends also referring to your car as "Alex" and your computer as "Ulfric". Heh.

Every house I've ever lived in has had a name, but you're right - you've got to wait for the house to suggest its own name. I've lived in The House of Fun, The Monkeyhouse, Wyrmwood and The Rainbow House. I'm currently waiting for my new house to pick its name.

Sometimes the name speaks about the occupants and mood of the household (The House of Fun), sometimes it's a big running joke (The Monkeyhouse), and sometimes it's about how we found the house, and the interests and values of the people it in (Wyrmwood, and The Rainbow House). Of course, I name my houses with the knowledge that they very much represent certainly stages of life, and that I'll only be there for a year or three. Naming a place permanently might require more thought.

This was probably completely unhelpful, but I figured it couldn't hurt to know you're not the only one. ;)

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Have you interviewed your housemates to see what the house means to them? People are talking about waiting for the house to speak to you, but perhaps it's been whispering the same thing to all four of you for some time now.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

Pretentious? Jeepers, I'm pretentious. I name every house I live in. possibly the best name I ever found was The Brokedown Palace of Lord Buckley, a wonderful house that is no longer there. It got named that because it was a big old house with big old house problems and the owner's last name was Buckley. The best place was The Treehouse - an attic apartment in a craftsman style house. if you looked out any window, what you could see was trees. But that's not all of it - I was trying to talk about the quality of the place, a feeling you had from being there, and the best I could do was the mystique of a child's tree house, where you drag in treasure and make it into a palace, or a pirate's cave, or pretend you're in Lothlorien.

There was The House of Cards - named for a bit of my distaste at the materials for construction, but even so. The Ghost Ladies' Tea Auxiliary - an old apartment building with a long and notorious reputation for being haunted, The Purple Pit - an apartment where the walls, floor, and ceiling were painted lavender, Cell Block A - another apartment building, this time of cinderblock construction. Naming these places is reflexive. I never thought for an instant that you were doing anything unusual.

And I liked the name Gray Gables.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I've never named a house I've lived in, and never thought to do so. But I'm not the kind of person who names things.

B