New Jersey’s Homestead Benefit program started back in 1976, intended to reduce the impact of high property taxes. This column isn’t about the Homestead Benefit, which was recently replaced by the less agrarian, more nautical-sounding ANCHOR program.
But it is about an associated benefit: because my home has been dubbed a “homestead,” it follows logically that I have the right to name that homestead, as homesteaders have been doing for centuries.
Hamilton Township considers my house to already have a name—a first name and a last name, in a way. Unfortunately, that name, like those of most other homes in Hamilton, is pretty boring, consisting of a Block number and a Lot number. This system creates a unique identifier for a particular place, but it’s about as interesting as if we all referred to each other by our Social Security numbers, driver license numbers or birthdates.
To be fair, properties have less formal names, just like people. But these also tend to be pedestrian, and less than romantic: a house number, combined with a street name, that creates an address and gives a quick, easy way to refer to a specific location. Sometimes, a memorable address comes with the home, like 49441 Zzyzx Road in California, 2400 Stinking Creek Road in Tennessee, or 1 Shades of Death Road here in New Jersey.
I’ve long been fascinated by New York City’s alternate street names, displayed prominently on corner signs, but mere honorary titles in the eyes of mapmakers and GPS systems. I hope that one day, while visiting my birth borough of Staten Island, I’ll be approached by a confused motorist and have the opportunity to deliver directions to “Make a left at Johnny Maestro Way,” or “Turn right at Lobster Joe Truscelli Drive.”
And what Staten Islander wouldn’t want to live on Crossing Guard Phyliss Ann Pizzuto Corner, George Kaye Katsoris Candy Man Way, or have an address in the Wu-Tang Clan District?
Just as it’s rare to come across someone whose name is preceded by a formal title, like England’s Earl of Sandwich (a.k.a. Lord Sandwich), or someone known by a one or two word stage name, like Madonna or Lady Gaga, it’s rare to encounter properties with distinctive names like “Buckingham Palace,” Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater,” or California megamansion “The One.”
The U.S. Constitution prevents the government from granting noble titles, though Americans with foreign titles can keep them, with certain restrictions—no one holding a title of nobility can work at a government job, for example, so all those foreign Dukes, Barons, and Earls will just have to give up their dreams of working for the U.S. Postal Service or the I.R.S.
Yet in a very American, Great Gatsby-ish way, nothing prevents anyone from naming, or re-naming, their property, just like anyone aspiring to hip-hop fame can wake up one day and tell people to only call him “Jay-Z,” even if his parents named him Shawn.
There’s a custom of not naming properties that aren’t big and grand or somehow dramatically different from others nearby, but from my observations, that custom’s time may be over. Still, there’s a big difference in size and connotation between the naming of proper estates like “The Breakers” in Newport, Rhode Island or Elvis’s “Graceland”—or even fictional estates like “Tara” in Gone With the Wind or “Xanadu” in Citizen Kane—and the naming of a home that’s perhaps slightly larger than its neighbors, and happens to sell $1,000 worth of firewood or canteloupes each year to qualify for a farmland assessment on property taxes.
We’ve all seen these properties, with names like “No Cents Farm” or “Chipmunk Hollow,” just like we’ve all seen fancier-than-merited names for housing, condominium, and apartment developments. Why take up residence at the reality-based but comparatively modest “Park Apartments” or “Village Apartments” (“Park” and “Village” are the two most common words in apartment complex names), when you can rent a place at “The Confluence at Harvest Hills”? And why buy a home at Crest Brook or Belle Point, when you can buy an extra “e,” Wheel of Fortune-style, and gain greater perceived prestige at Crest Brooke or Belle Pointe?
I wasn’t looking to name a housing development or apartment complex, just my own average suburban house. I sought advice online, and found there are plenty of name generators and blog posts on the subject, with real-life examples that tend toward the farm-centric.
One actual farm name combined its Cape Cod location with its resident chickens to get “The Cape Coop.” Another owner settled on “Clucky Dickens Farm,” because someone once misspoke while trying to say “ducky chickens.” Isn’t that just so cute you want to scream? And keep screaming?
It must be pointed out that the people offering these examples maintain websites dubbed A Farmish Kind of Life, Accidental Hippies, Pasture Deficit Disorder, and other cringeworthy examples of middling wit and self-created mythology.
Just as I was having doubts about the wisdom of this venture, I found several surveys that seemed to prove people’s willingness to pay more for a named property than an unnamed one. Now, naming my property wouldn’t be an unnecessary, ostentatious display of vainglory, it would simply be a sound personal finance decision. Relieved, I ran through possibilities, aided by a Brazilian tilapia farmer’s farm name generator at ToughNickel.com. I was prompted to choose an adjective (Reckless, Heavenly, Sunny, Smilin’, etc.), a noun (Buzzard, Bramble, Bluff), and a place type from conveniently provided tables. “Your imagination only limits you,” the site noted—probably just an example of misplaced word order by a non-native English speaker, but in my case, perhaps no truer words were ever spoken.
“Hideaway” didn’t make the cut because it might attract undesirables on the run from the law. “Oasis” seemed like false advertising or overpromising, and might require some commitment to distribute free food and water to travelers. “Retreat” could draw spiritual types or corporate event planners—neither was desirable to me—and “The Dabbene Retreat” sounds more like an ignominious battlefield maneuver than a quiet, pleasant residence.
One site recommends incorporating local flora or fauna, and the owner’s feelings about them, into a name; given my antipathy for tree-based rodents, “Squirrel’s Doom” seemed promising. I also used suggestions for adjective (“broken”) and place name (“arms”) to create “The Squirrel’s Broken Arms.” If squirrels ever develop the ability to read, they’ll know to steer clear of me and my home. Meanwhile, recent years have seen red foxes delivering late-night mating calls from the farthest recesses of our downward-pitched backyard, yielding another fitting name: “Screaming Fox Hollow.”
These names seemed a bit too aggressive, so in the tradition of Native American place names in New Jersey, like Weehawken (“place of gulls”), Absecon (“place of swans”), and Metuchen (“dry firewood”), I made up a few Native American-ish names, like “Nonacuttin,” a Native American-ish word meaning “Hasn’t mowed the lawn lately.” Other plant-based possibilities included “Weedy Manor,” “Brownfields,” and “Terra Erba Alta,” which means “Tall Grass Land” in Latin. The mixed results of my past efforts to grow vegetables offered the potential name “Dead Tomato Row.”
Another school of thought for property-naming hinges on something unique about the building in question. There’s not much that’s unusual about my house, but we do have a carport, which isn’t especially common. Combining this with a gratuitous Star Wars reference created the name “Mos Eisley Carport.”
None of these names stood out as a clear winner, and I realized that, in the same way one can live a happy and productive life never referring to oneself in the third person, there’s really no need to give a house or property a name. Lot and Block designations, house number and street address—sometimes, the only name that’s needed is “home.”
,
