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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Aibu to think house names are pretentious

107 replies

MrHankyTheXmasPoo · 26/02/2016 00:15

Fair enough if no number. In that case there is no choice.

am I the only one who has a chuckle at the likes of Dunroamin,3 ordinary street, etc

OP posts:
RubyChewsDay · 26/02/2016 07:52

When they moved house to the other end of town they took the name plaque with them, so any house they live in is called the same thing. WTF?

I would actually do this, It makes perfect sense to me, Im a cheapskate Grin

MaryPoppinsPenguins · 26/02/2016 07:53

I only like names when they're relevant.. Like, The Old Mill having actually been a mill or The Little Cottage being the smaller of two named cottages.

I think that makes me boring Wink

CakeThat · 26/02/2016 07:54

My favourite house name is Fair Corfe which if pronounced in a posh accent is basically feck 'orf!

HazelBite · 26/02/2016 07:56

Although we are suburban/south east our house does not have a number only a name. When people ask my address and I tell them they always say "But what's your house number?" and I get given a look that they think I'm being pretentious when I tell them that we don't have a number only a name!

fakenamefornow · 26/02/2016 07:57

Our house has only a name. Xxx Cottage. I've lived here six years, we don't even know the name of the road it's on. Our address is xxx Cottage, xxx Village, then postcode.

I know what you mean though, if you live on a bog standard new build estate and give your house a name.

elephantpig · 26/02/2016 07:58

My family name is Hunt. We always said that we should name our house The Hunting Lodge or similar.

SoupDragon · 26/02/2016 07:59

YANBU to think whatever you like. It doesn't make you right though :)

Piemernator · 26/02/2016 08:06

The house I grew up in was built in the 1830's and only had a name, does sound terribly posh and I suppose it was. That beautiful house has been turned in to five flats.

Only1scoop · 26/02/2016 08:11

Names are fine if there is no number.

MistressWeatherwax · 26/02/2016 08:12

I used to live near a house called "Tip View". I liked that they'd named if that very much.

It did indeed have a view of the tip. Well technically the recycling plant but still.

ICantDecideOnAUsername · 26/02/2016 08:29

I think it depends on the name and the house if its pretentious or not.

I like 'The old ......' if it actually was that and there are loads of old ( possibly Victorian) houses near us and my parents with names carved into the stone above the door.

New builds with names are a bit naff.

When my parents bough their current house (a 1920s bungalow) they found an address stamp with a house name and the address. They kept it (it was a lovely ornate thing) but have never used it or the name. The actual house doesn't have a name so it would be a but odd to refer to it as that.

firstandlastthing · 26/02/2016 08:31

We live in a very ordinary house.....we are thinking of having a sign made up for 'Gruntfuttock Manor' We then may change our names by deed poll to Lord and Lady Gruntfuttock....just because we can

acasualobserver · 26/02/2016 08:39

Fair enough if no number

This is the only acceptable reason for giving your house a name.

Bythepath · 26/02/2016 08:42

Mine has a name, Shepherds cottage - it used to be where the shepherd lived. I grew up in a house named after the person who built it. I often think of the reasons behind the names when I drive past houses.

Benimev · 26/02/2016 08:50

Had to NC for this one as it totally outs me

I grew up in a house called Benimev. It is Turkish for 'My House' We lived in Turkey in the 1970s when my dad worked there. My dad wanted to call it Senimev (our house) but my mum said no. They're divorced now....

GabiSolis · 26/02/2016 11:27

YANBU op. I really don't get why people do it when there is already a house number in place, it's baffling.

Even worse than pretentious house names are the people who claim they don't live on a street. They'll say they live in Blahblah House in Blahblah Village and it turns out they actually live in 3 Blahblah Street, Blahblah. Now that's pretentious! It's like living in a street is something to be ashamed of. Bizarre.

lalalalyra · 26/02/2016 12:48

We have a house name and a number, but we had the name first (original part of the house is 100+ years old) and the number only a few years since one of the new houses in the road asked for a number to be allocated.

We discovered two years ago that the cul de sac actually has a name as well, but no-one uses it as parcels and mail ended up going to Xxxx Road which is on the other side of the town.

Our house name no longer makes sense. It's called Middle Cottage and no-one knew for sure why for years until an old photo was found showing that it used to stand between two huge trees and it's thought it was most likely called Middletree Cottage first. We'd all assumed that the other two original cottages had been called Top/Bottom and had their names changed, but they hadn't.

MitzyLeFrouf · 26/02/2016 12:49

Casa Bevron is the first thing I thought of!

JosephBrodsky · 26/02/2016 13:05

Fair enough if the house predates numbers - our village has an Old Bakehouse, an Old Rectory, Home Farm, an Old Forge, Weir Cottage (next to an old horsepond), Church Farm etc, and the old part of the village is Main Street, School Lane, Church Lane etc (which are satisfyingly plain and self-explanatory). No one 'names' them, that's just what they've been called since they stopped being forges or farmhouses.

However the new part (from the 70s) has a plethora of make-uppy road names, usually an amalgam of the developers/builders' children's/wives' names (think Waltlyn Avenue, Deananne Drive, Barbara Close etc) and a rash of Dunroamin 'I'm mad, me' type names (Two Hoots, anyone?) and Honeymoon Destinations (Capri, Serengeti). There's also something a bit mad about an identical row of red brick semis called Rose Villa, Laburnum Lodge, and Mountain View House (with a view across flat fields).

Benimev · 26/02/2016 13:13

oh and our neighbours lived in Terricon (her name was Terri, and his was Eric)

randomsabreuse · 26/02/2016 13:20

In my old town there was a Camion Vista. Rather took the piss of "Dartmoor View" which had a similar view of a transport company depot. Our old house had a name as the only road through the hamlet didn't so address was name of house, name of village which totally stuffed up many online systems. So much more convenient to live at number, road!

QueenJuggler · 26/02/2016 13:23

GabiSolis I really don't live in a street. Lots of people don't.

Dapplegrey1 · 26/02/2016 13:28

Joseph - in our village and the one next door there's an Old Bake House, an Old Vicarage and an Old Post Office for obvious reasons.
Maybe in years to come there will be Old Video Shop and Old Filling Station and other more recently redundant types of shop.

TwilightRabbit · 26/02/2016 13:32

When my parents moved into their first house (that they still live in 45 years later!), it was called Tankerville, which sounds ever so posh, but in reality it was that it had a large water tank in the front garden Grin
My parents got rid of the tank and changed the name to something really inoffensive and dull
It is in a small village, too small to have a street, so all the houses have names - one of the newer ones is the Tractor Shed, because that's what it used to be....

5Foot5 · 26/02/2016 13:33

I have never lived in a house with a name but, when DH and I retire, we are awfully tempted to call ours "Duncodin"

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