NAME THIS HOUSE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 24

NAME THIS HOUSE

If you are suddenly asked to suggest names foe six new houses it makes you a little more observant in your study of titles printed on garden gates! And you will perhaps be amazed to note the eccentricity of the same in various neighbourhoods! (says a writer in the Newcastle “Weekly Chronicle”). Men settling down after the war seem to have wished to express themselves as slangily as possible, -n foreign terms, oi; more often in words suggesting rest and peace. Bo we gel “Dunroamin’,” “Sum 'Opes,” “Pio Tern,” “Ties Bon,” "Mon Abri/ "Our Dug-out,” “Desire,” “Query?” ana “Journey’s End." A crop of every kind of name containing “Home” in it is popular, also the Latin ferm of “Dulce Dornum.” The names suggesting rest are varied, some rathe: beautiful, some too high flown or nonsensical. A few found in one particular neighbourhood aro "Lazyland,” “Arcadia," “Nirvana,’ ’ “Lullaby” (with “Picciola" next door!). “Harmony,” “Plncilla/ "Bido a Wee," “Rest-a-wyte” (and many variations of “Rest,” such as “Rest-barrow,” including simply “The Rest”), “Pax,” and “Eventide,” with two oi perhaps greater beauty, “Green Pastures” and “Grass Valley.” Size —or rather lack of size—is a fea--ture in the house-names of to-day, for comparatively few mansions are being built. So we find "Arks” and “Noah’s Arks,” “Kosi Kots,” “Huts,” "Hutches,”. “Nests” (sometimes belonging to robins, wrens, or swallows!), “Nutchells,’ and “Acorn Cottages," and in one case “The Matchbox” by way of variation. Literary people may choose book titles. "Stella Maris" and “Cranford” are happier examples than some. Characters taken from plays and fairy stories also appear. “Wendy,” "Tink-a-bell,” and possibly “Puss-in-Boots,” and “Hop-o’-My Thumb” were chosen to please children. “Queer,” “The Orange Girl," "Le Gnome." "Penguin,” "The Bird,” and “The Wigwam" are much too bizarre to please most people. “Sunrise/ “Sunlit." “Sunset,” “Morning Dawn," and “The Stars", may suggest that their owners are poetical, but there is a slight ring of affectation about such names as "Ye Olde House at Home” and “Ye Old Tile-house.” But “Ye Old Barne,” “The Windmill." and “Malthouses” can be quite charming when suggesting origins of old buildings.. “Bruff,” “The Four Winds,” “Windyhaugh,” are good names for the open hillside, and "The Chimes" for a house in an old-world cathedral city. Still, when all is said and done, one grows a little weary of the form of self-expres-sion that perpetuates itself in housenames. And to see plain “Twenty-one” painted in clear letters on a garden gate is a relief rather than otherwise.