Giving your house a name.

Our house has a name,but it was given by the person who built it many moons ago. Still it is a lovely and very appropriate name. All the houses near us are named

We live in a converted Victorian board school. The people before us called it 'Truants' but we just call it Number 17!

When I was a child all the houses in our road had names. I think it’s a pity very few do now. In nostalgic mood I went back to look at the road not long ago, and almost all the gates with the names on had been removed in order to widen the drives to accommodate bigger cars. Such a shame. I lived in two houses with names: Newthorpe and The Beeches - it had copper beech trees in the front garden.

Since I’ve grown up I haven’t had a house with a name, but both my brother and my elder son have houses that already had names when they bought them. Neither house has a number, which must be hard for the postman and delivery people.

I think if you gave an ordinary surburban house a name now you would be considered pretentious, which is a bit silly. Why? It’s a nice imaginative thing to do, and gives the house some individuality. I had a secret name for the house I lived in most of my adult life, but I think if I’d put it on the gate the neighbours would have thought it very strange. Since most of the houses in that road were quite old, I think it’s likely they had names originally.

(Mind you, some of the names could be a bit over-ambitious. I once saw a very ordinary semi called Balmoral.)

We built a house on plot where there was no numbering system, so the local authority said we had to choose a name. We looked at the plot's history - I would have been happy with The Old Piggery but DH vetoed it. He also vetoed the New House!
We looked at dialect and local features and couldn't agree (especially as our local dialect is not melodious!) It does seem a bit odd now, but we really couldn't find anything!
Finally, a young friend suggested we call it 'The [our Surnames]' which actually works quite well. It is a little odd when I'm giving name and address over the phone, but I don't mind.
And, as we had both done home visiting in our time, we got a prominent, easily readable sign - and as it is our surname it also works well for deliveries.
I'm not sure what the next people in will think of it - but not our problem!

My sister bought a bungalow named after her eldest son she thought it was meant to be. I’ve never lived in a named house.

As I spend a lot of time trying to find houses can I make a plea for clear names which are easily readable from the road especially in the dark? Also if you home has a number as well as a name display both in large lettering. The emergency services will probably only get the number and time wasted can be a life list.
Putting a large reflective number on your wheelie bin if it’s kept in the front of your house is a huge help.

Nearly all my homes have had names.

The current one has a name that I cannot stand - "y"s where "i"s should be -sickeningly twee. But it is a bit of a palaver to get it officially changed and I can't be bothered.

Luckygirl, your house name couldn’t be worse than the one my parents’ first house had when they bought it in the 1940s. It was called Kozy Kot (sic)! They changed it very hastily, as you can imagine.

I was a bit mystefied by the OP's reference to the Dah Hahs.
Could that be the Dower House (as said with a posh English accent)?

Where I grew up our house didn't have a number. It went by the name of the house, then the name of the village. I must have a look and see if it now has a number or at least a post code.

I live in a small house which I've named 'Hope Cottage' although it's not officially part of the address - just a sign. I need to arrange paperwork with the local council if I want to make it official. I'll do that one day when I find the paperwork.

My parents old house had a name, with the appropriate tree outside its front door which was covered in berries in the winter-----so lovely.

A friend of mine still has the same house name in the same house for over 70 years, next door to my family home. Ex SiL also has a house name.

My parent's house in Scotland was named by me. My mother was Irish so I looked at an Irish map and chose a village whose name appealed to me.

My house has a name, as has every other house in the street. It was named when it was built around 125 years ago - don't think I will bother changing it!

My house has a name, and the three previous houses had names too, there’s a lot of named houses about.Most houses that are non estate do have names (in my village.)

I love house names.
Where I live, a lot of people built their own houses, (with varying degrees of skill!)
They would come down from London and build them bit by bit, and there were some wonderful names.
Sadly they've all but gone now.

All the houses I've lived in since getting married have had names. All named by previous occupants, and we've never seen fit to change them.
One village we lived on had a house called "Laughing Stock", ? and the old primary school is now "Eleven Plus".

A 1998 survey of house names carried out by the Halifax Building Society (based on 1.2 million investors and nearly 134,000 borrowers who had named houses) showed that most were unimaginative. The Bungalow and The Cottage were the most popular.

For fans of The Archers, Brookside and Home Farm were numbers 49 and 50.

www.housenameheritage.com/hnh_fav_1988Top100.asp

I like Chez When especially for Sean Connery .

My home is a narrow boat. I have called her Circle of Peace. I live peacefully on a lovely river.

I love to look at the names and ponder how they came about..

DD2 has a house with a name. They filled a lot of forms and paid a fee to change it as it was originally named after an Italian holiday resort which they did not particularly like or feel appropriate for a house on a wooded hill in Surrey. It never had a number. DD would have preferred to be just number 40 ..or whatever!

My house was built 3 years ago and named Buttercup House because it is surrounded by a field of buttercups!

We moved a couple of years ago to a house named after a beautiful spreading purple flower which blooms in May.
I prefer the rhyming option and refer to it as Hysteria Cottage.