Naming home

Perhaps it is due to many long and pleasant hours spent with Anne Shirley of Green Gables, but I have always had a bit of a romantic fascination with naming houses. Growing up in suburbia, however, it never seemed quite right. Here, we live in houses, not estates. But downtown, there is a beautifully manicured lawn with a sign posted at the corner: Hunley's Haven. Whenever I drive by, it makes me smile. They have built themselves something more than a house to come home to at the end of the working day.

When we were in negotiations to buy the house down the road from us, the idea came to me again. It was a large house on almost three acres. It was a home to be named, but what would we name it? What name would impart our hopes and dreams for it? A name would come, I decided, and come it did. The house named itself: The Stinky House. That's what the children called it. That's what we called it. That's what we still call it though we are no longer trying to purchase it.

A strange name, but one with a bit of history and meaning to us. I wonder what the neighbors would have thought?

And here we are again, on the cusp of embarking on this journey of country living. Five acres, a couple of barns, a pasture. And a home to be named. And here I am, again, unsure exactly how one goes about naming a property.

So far, two names have occurred to me. I sort of like them both, but for very different reasons.

1. Roscommon Acres. Because our family name originates in County Roscommon, Ireland. Ballaghaderreen, to be exact. Actually, I kind of like that, too, but would anyone be able to pronounce it?
2. A Very Nearly Nowhere. Because that is exactly where we will be living.

Then I'll have to start working on my sign so the cows know who we are.