NAME THIS HOUSE!

Evening Star, Issue 19785, 8 February 1928, Page 12

NAME THIS HOUSE!

If you arc suddenly asked to suggest names for six new houses it makes you a little more observant in your study oi titles printed on garden gates! And you will perhaps be amazed to note the eccentricity of the same in various neighborhoods (says a writer in the Newcastle ‘Weekly Clironiclo’). Men settling down alter the war seem to have wished to express themselves as slangily as possible, in foreign terms, or more often in words suggesting rest and peace. So we get ‘‘ Dnuroainm’, •‘Sum ’Opes,” “Fro Tern,” “ Trcs Bon,” “Mon Abri,” “Our Dug-out,’ “Desire,” “Query!’” and “Journeys End.” A crop of every kind of name containing “ Homo” in it is populai, also the Latin form of “ Dulco Domnin.” The names suggesting rest arc varied, some rather beautiful, some too high flown or nonsensical. A tew found in one particular neighborhood are “Lazyland,” “Arcadia,” “Nirvana,” “Lullaby” (with “ I’iccioln ” next door!), “Harmony,” “ Pladlla,” “Bide a Wee, M u Besi-a-wylc(unci many variations of “.Rest,” such as “ Rest-harrow,” including simply “The Rest”), “ Pax,” and “ Eventide,” with two of perhaps greater beauty, “Green Pastures” and “Grass Valley.” Size—or rattier lack of iszc—is a feature iu the house names of to-day, for comparatively few mansions arc being built. So we find “ Arks ” and “ Noah s Arks,” “ Kosi Rots,” “Huts,” “Hutches,” “Nests” (sometimes belonging to robins, wrens, or swallows!), “ Nntchells,” 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 irom plays and fairy stories also appear “ Wendy,” “ Tink-a-bell,” and possibly “ Puss-in-Roots,” and “ Hop-o’-My Thumb ” were chosen to please _ children. “Queer,” “The Orange Girl,'” “Le Gnome,” “Penguin,” “The Bird,” and “The Wigwam” ai'e 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 “Malt-houses” 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 cathedra! city. Still, when all is said and done, one grows a little weary of the form of self-expression that perpetuates itself- in house names. And to see plain “ Twenty-one ” painted in clear letters on a garden gate is a relief rather than otherwise.