House Names

I wish we had a name for our house.

In Aylesbury I called our house Hagia Sofia (Greek.  Means 'holy wisdom'), though the name never really stuck with the Badger, so we mostly called it 27 Tindal Road.

When I lived in a tiny 2-roomed apartment in Hastings I called it Gezellig, because that's what my friend Carien, visiting from the Netherlands, said it was.  Gezellig, she said, means comfortable, but also like a place that has soul.  It used to be an Old English word too - going back into and before the Dark Ages now -  where its form was gesaelig, meaning ensouled, overtones of the holy.  'Saelig' morphed into 'silly', which meant innocent back then.  It came to mean foolish and lightheaded because people born with learning disability were seen as holy innocents - silly - soul-people.

When I sold my apartment I bought a lovely little house - cosy and homely and friendly.  The perfect house, I thought (still do).  At the time our Fi was working down in Dorset in a retreat house, and to get there we had to drive along Godsblessing Lane.  I loved that name.  So I called the new house Godsblessing House.  Grace lives there now (sounds appropriate!).

Then we came to this house.  I've had various ideas for its name, but it isn't just my house, and all my suggestions have been received with indifference at best. Hmm.

We were talking about this yesterday over supper, when I said High Dudgeon would be a good name for a house.  In fact there could be a whole street. Ivory Tower could be next door.  Hebe thought one of the houses might be called Coventry. Alice named one of them Side Partings .  I think one of them might be called The Sticks - or, for the classically trained and pretentious, The Styx.  And I suppose there'd inevitably be some nouveau riche honeymoon couple move in who would lower the tone of the whole street by calling their house Kenbarbie.