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| The Ledges - Photo by Salt Water New England |
Over the years, I have received questions about naming houses, including one just a few days ago. The basic questions for the community include:
- Does your year-round house have a name? How about your summer house?
- If one is building or buying a house, what goes into selecting a name?
- Is it generally a good idea to name a house?
A great post! Our current house does not have a name. The house my father grew up in is called Friend Field, and the house my grandparents subsequently restored was called Thimble Hall. I would be hard-pressed to find a name better than those two!
ReplyDeleteThis is good Sarah :-)
DeleteYes, the current residence is named Money Pit, while the house on the Cape is Financial Torment.
ReplyDelete🤣🤣🤣 our has the SAME NAME‼️
DeleteAll the houses I inherited from my parents have names. The antique colonial that's my primary residence got its name when a former owner turned it into a restaurant in the 1930s and the name stuck. Another was named after the house where my Dad was born. The name got reused for his retirement home. A cottage my parents bought was named so I was told by me when I was 5 years old. Since becoming an adult I have not come up with good names for my purchases--paucity of imagination maybe, but I love the ones that are named. And yes, I have way too much real estate. Spoiled I spose. I just hate to get rid of things I love.
ReplyDeleteSame here! All of the houses that I inherited already had a name, which is good because my feeble mind lacks the creativity to properly name a grand estate. If only I could recall where all of them are….alas, my brain is not what it once was. We spend the majority of our time at Lockjaw Haven in Palm Beach and Mount Humblebrag in Newport, but also enjoy getting away to our cottages and villas in Gstaad, Paris, Northeast Harbor, London, Napa, and Aspen. The biggest challenge is finding dependable pilots to get us there. Flying commercial can be such a vulgar experience these days 😊.
DeleteI hope you have a Rochefoucault watch to keep track of all those time zones. Or of course, you can have your traveling staff do it for you. Fortunately we are on our third generation of butler from the same family. Yes, my butler's father's father was a gentleman's gentleman. :)
DeleteWhy not? After all, we name boats and cars. Of course the trick is to come up with a name that fits and does not sound too grand, unless it is an obviously tongue in cheek name. Our first home looked like a miniature version The Band's house, Big Pink, and we called it Little Pink.
ReplyDeleteThat photo is the epitomy of New England .
ReplyDeleteYes , our year-round home is named Rosevears . I recall this question on here several years ago Muffy . The apartment is just an apartment ........
ReplyDeleteIn the beach community where I grew up, only summer cottages had names. That said, my year-round cabin in the inland woods is aptly named "Nosegay Holler"
ReplyDeleteHave a scroll through U.K. real estate listings. You often find houses with names (usually older homes) and oddly, the name is also part of the mailing address despite the fact the house will have a number.
ReplyDeleteMy mother called our house twigs, but nobody else did. In retrospect maybe it was mean to be ironic since the house was neither small nor made of wood.
ReplyDeleteMeant, not mean.
DeleteThis is one where I think there should be a pretty hard line: if the house came with a name, use it and celebrate it; but naming is yourself seems awfully gauche.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this, though I would add a codicil: in order to pass muster, the name that your house came with has to have been in use for at least fifty years before you arrived on the scene. If some previous owner gave your house some cutesy name in the 80's or after, best to just ignore that fact.
DeleteGrowing up in a country town in Massachusetts, many of us lived in old colonial houses with substantial acreage. The homes and the land required a commitment of time, even with help. Although our home did not have a name, we all chuckled at the name our friends, just down the road a bit, gave theirs - "Back Acres."
ReplyDeleteBuilt by my wife's great grandfather and poorly renovated by her brother before his passing, ours is "Old Vinylsides".
ReplyDeleteBest name ever (not ours) for a newly purchased, mortgaged-to-the-max house in a posh neighborhood: "Odette."
ReplyDeleteI found an old photo of our 1836 house and if you look at it just right there is the trace of a name: Ogeedankee, which is Native American for "up the hill," written by a former owner.
ReplyDeleteUsing a noun for the name of a house or property I find pretentious, but referring to it by the name of a past owner or builder is a way of honoring those who came before.
ReplyDelete"The Ledges" makes me smirk, but "The A.E. Williams House," "The Cooley Cottage," and "the old Smith farm" recall facts rather than aesthetic aspirations.
Totally agree, of course, with naming houses after their original owners, often combined with the date they were built. This is how most historic homes are known -- except for the great old estates, country retreats, and summer places of the wealthy, like "Lyndhurst," "Roseland Cottage," and "The Breakers," the original pretentiousness of which is now celebrated and legendary.
DeleteNear me in our town's historic district is the mid-19th century home of a locally-famous magnate and philanthropist. This place had always been identified by his full, distinguished name. But new owners have recently re-named it, just using this gentleman's first name only in front of "House" -- as if "The Calvin Coolidge Homestead" had now become "Calvin House." Doesn't sit well with me ... seems somehow belittling and disrepectful, besides sounding like a rather full-of-itself B&B.
Homes on Sandbridge here in the Old Dominion have names, well, most of them do. As a child, I remember one called Serendipity. Our current house is called Two Maples.
ReplyDeleteMy little Gothic Revival house came with the name "Riverbend", owing to its location on a bend in the Farmington... you guessed it! :)
ReplyDeleteThe porch ceiling in the picture above appears to be Haint Blue. Quite a southern thing.
ReplyDeleteMy great-grandparents built a place on Walloon Lake in Michigan. They called it Birchcrest. My great-grandfather died in that house in 1940. About 10 or so years later it was sold to a new family and I visited the house and family in 2007. They were thrilled to meet a descendant of the original owners and the Birchcrest sign is still over the front porch. However, they all call it, "the old Smith place." It still has 40 acres of the original property.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I own two homes, one in town and one in the country. We cleverly call them, "the town house" (a single family home) and "the country place" (a small cottage on three acres).
Yes! Just like fine automobiles, these things are so much a part of our daily lives, they deserve that respect!
ReplyDeleteOur year round house, which used to be our beach house is named “The Sandcastle” which is directly on the beach and on Castle Road.
ReplyDeleteMy family has a tradition of giving not terribly creative names to houses and pets alike. My grandfather owned a house known as "The Farm." (Interestingly, the current owners still use that name, they put a little sign at the end of the driveway which says "The Farm.") It wasn't a farm, though, just a house, but it was big and red so I guess it reminded my grandparents of a barn.
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents' next house was known as "The House on the Hill" becuase... it's on a hill. Creative, right?
My own house in Southern California is known (to members of our family but not to outsiders) as "The Hovel" because it's small and always needs maintenance. It's almost fully repaired, and I suppose it'll need a new name once it's got a new roof.
Our pets have equally unimaginative names, our current cats are "Grey" (she's grey), "Tiger" (he's got stripes) and "White Face" (his face is white.) In the past we've had "Ralph" (we found him in the parking lot of a branch of a local supermarket chain known as Ralph's) and "Orange Tabby." (This one is self-explanatory.)
I've thought of giving our houses and pets literary or grandiose names but... we just don't have enough imagination to come up with something clever.
Yes I think some homes deserve a name.
ReplyDeleteOur antique home on the Cape came with a name, "Our Place". We took that as a sign to put in an offer almost 8 years ago. In a past life, I owned an old home in a small N.H. village, next to an historic meeting house with a clock that chimed on the hour. I named that place "Bell Toll Cottage". It's a favorite pastime to check out new and old quarterboards on Cape Cod. One I've yet to find is "Passing Wind", but given what is being built here these days, it's only a matter of time. Hope that gives you a smile.
ReplyDeleteThat gave me a good, hearty belly laugh, which I desperately needed today. Thank you for this.
DeleteThe house in northern VA is called the rectory, because it literally is a rectory. The house in Georgia is in the country and is named after the family who built it and then grew it in the 1820s and 1840s.
ReplyDeleteNo, not run-of-the-mill housed. That said, estates, plantations, and farms can be named, as well as summer "camps" and "cottages." But not your average home. It's rather pretentious to name your house.
ReplyDeleteAs in “Subdivided”?
DeleteI have three properties. They each have names and I don't use any of them and there are no signs up noting the names. I use: "the house" and "the camp". Saying any other name/names sounds like we're trying too hard.
ReplyDeleteConcur. My husband's family in England has a house name, Millcroft, as is tradition, we do not keep a house with a be here, in the States.
DeleteMy maternal grandparents owned a circa 1835 farmhouse on ~50 acres in what was once rural New Jersey. It had two names; “Garryford Farm”, a combination of my grandparents’ last names, and “Manure Manor”, my late mother’s nod to her days as a stall mucker. The sign at the end of the lane read Garryford Farm.
ReplyDeleteManure Manor. I love it!!
Delete"Shoe Box", New York
ReplyDeletePitt de' Monet
ReplyDeleteWe haven't named houses. family members have named other things: Salsa (red convertible), big burrito (large blue sedan), snowball (white Saab 900), eight ball (black Nissan Altima), Cindy (the prius i currently drive), Tommy the treadmill.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of buddies who like to reminisce about their dearly departed Saabs. All of them seem to have individual Christian names, but also share a family name: The Saab/Sob Story.
DeleteSaab people are an interesting lot. They'll readily admit that whatever Japanese or Korean car they're now driving is infinitely more reliable, cost effective, quiet, climate controlled, etcetera, but they'll still insist they liked driving their old Saabs more. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
What you say is true. My brother and I both long for our long deceased Saabs. Nothing like soaring down the highway in my Saab with the roof and windows open with jazz blaring... heaven!
DeleteWe live in VA, on a wooded property that has more foxes than we have ever seen. Our house is 40 years old and never had a name. We decided to name the house "Foxwood house" we even bought a bronze plaque for the brick plinth. The morning after the plaque was installed a red fox hopped on top of the plinth and sat there for almost half an hour! We love it and have a good laugh every time we see that fox!
ReplyDeleteOur house and acreage are referred to as either, Tycke Acres (the woods are loaded with ticks) or "Insert Town Name Here Manor". These are in jest. Our cottage, however, is Smith Point and is named after my great-great grandparents because they built it. We always nick name our vehicles. One Volvo was called The Diggler by our youngest and it was called that by everyone until its demise at 309k miles and 26 years. Heidi
ReplyDeleteYes. We call it “The House.”
ReplyDelete