What's in a Name?

The extraordinary opportunity to name our street.

It’s not often that we get the chance to name our street.  We name our children.  We name our pets.  (I always thought that Smooch was one of the all-time greatest names for a dog.  This, especially after you’ve gotten to know her).  We consult books and make lists in order to name our children.  The name of our last grandchild was kept under wraps until she had finally appeared.

So, it was both exciting and momentous to have the opportunity to name the street that we live on. We live in rural Vermont and are in the midst of building a new house. We sub-divided our property so our new house is right next to our old farmhouse.  (More on that in another post.)    There is a law in Vermont that says that if there are more than three houses on a street, it must have a name.  There are now three households on this small street so our neighbors gathered virtually to agree on a name.  Many ideas were bandied about.

Some background on our neighbors is important. The house at the end of the street was built by a lovely couple who held all manner of new age workshops for the community when they were alive.   The wife actually taught us about dowsing.

(Dowsing is an unexplained process in which people use a forked twig or wire to find missing and hidden objects. Dowsing, also known as divining and doodlebugging, is often used to search for water or missing jewelry, but it is also often employed in other applications including ghost hunting, crop circles and fortunetelling.)

She demonstrated her dowsing skills to us with fresh eggs from our chickens. My husband had delivered a dozen fresh eggs to them and she had just come home from the market with store-bought eggs.  She announced that she would use dowsing to tell which were the fresh eggs. They set up a small experiment and lo and behold, she actually did it. She guessed which were the fresh eggs.

The son, who now owns the property, was eager to honor his parents since they had built the house.  So we had a collection of names like Harmony, Illumination, Tranquility, Solace, etc.  You get the drift.

Our other neighbor is a psychologist and sees her patients at her home. She did not want to spook anyone with a name that signaled “spirituality”.  I, of course, am a musical girl so I warmed up to the idea of Harmony Way.

Then we went with a different tact. We began to think about the place and not so much the people who inhabit the street.  There are lovely old barns on one property and an old orchard.  So we explored names that were fitting around barns and trees.  These included:

Old Orchard Way

Nonsuch Way (this, for those who don’t know, is a kind of apple tree that grows on the property)

Three Barn Path

Then the conversation took a completely different turn and we began to share outrageous names that honor the wildlife who share our land with us. These included:

Tenacious Ground Hog Weapon of Mass Garden Destruction Hollow

Allegedly Extinct Catamount Crossing

Trespassing Chicken Path

Thuggy Deer Gauntlet

Lyme Disease Deer Run

Stinky Skunk Refuge

And in a nod to our Ancestors-

Why Did My Father Choose a Flat Roof in Vermont Path

Or my personal favorite-  Will My New House Ever Be Done Street

The exercise was lots of fun and gave us a wonderful opportunity to enjoy each other’s ideas and humor.  In the end, after a carefully curated process of ranking, and ordering, we came up with our name.  I don’t want to jinx anything by revealing it here because it still needs to be approved by the Town..

I guess you’ll have to come over for a visit when our new sign is up to see our street name.

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