Google Earth just threw up
Naming Your Neighborhood Probably Involved Beer Pong and Copious Amounts of Weed
Just another side gig for bored romance novel writers
I live in Highgate Manor.
My family moved here 30 years ago and we hardly gave a thought to our development’s name. Who cared. It’s not part of our mailing address and has been useful only in giving locals an idea of where we lived.
“You’re in Kendall Park? Where?”
“Highgate.”
“Ah, off 27 by the Sunoco?”
“Yep.”
That didn’t work with anyone from outside Kendall Park, of course. But notably, no one has ever said, “Oooh, you live in a manor?”
No one would be that stupid.
Highgate Manor has manors about as much as nearby Wetherhill Plantation has cotton fields or Timber Ponds has even one pond.
These development names are a big farce for the most part, a pretty useless convention that nevertheless allows someone in some construction office to have fun with words.
There are exceptions now and again; I’m fully aware of that.
To my shock I discovered that Hidden Lake does indeed have a lake, and unless you know where to look for it, it is quite hidden. I would bet heavily though that the corporate drone who named it is not even aware of its existence.
Anyway. I sometimes get to wondering how these developments get named in the first place. The township doesn’t seem to give a spit except proscribing names already in use and frowning on words and innuendos made famous by George Carlin and Andrew “Dice” Clay.
I do have my suspicion, borne out by the previously mentioned fact that the drone namer clearly never set foot on the property before naming it.
Here’s my theory. Someone in the real estate developer’s office makes one list of random flowery adjectives and a second list of peaceful-sounding nouns.
The two lists are shuffled and matched in no particular order to come up with plausible development names that are otherwise not grounded in reality.
How else does one explain Avalon Watch or Fresh Impressions or flat-as-a-pancake Brunswick Heights?
I decided to whip up a list of name pairings and throw it up on the internets for anyone to use as they please.
I won’t monetize it in any way. My reward will be seeing how many of them will be appropriated and actually pass muster in some corporate boredroom before making it onto municipal maps.
An initial sampling:
Mordant Meadows
A crotchety adult community. Get off the grass!
Listless Lakes
The sibilance is certainly a selling point. So quiet. Too quiet…
Contagion Cottages
Are the streets always this empty here?
Lavender Lesions
Worth a look. By someone in the medical profession.
Rumor Mill
Set alongside the babbling Tattle-Tale Brook.
Grassy Gulch
Everyone mows their own lawn here wearing HOA-issued cowboy hats.
Anchovy Acres
Not for everyone. You either love it or hate it here.
Whining Woods
A community of young parents. Walking distance to several bars.
Licentious Lakes
Just another bedroom community.
Heaven’s Gate
If you get this one, you moved here in 1980 and lost every penny of your investment.
Wheezing Willows
An inactive adult community of smokers.
District 12
The stretch of New Jersey between Woodbridge and Hoboken. If you know, you know.
Grassy Knoll
I’d keep an eye on that new guy on the sixth floor if I were you.
New Development
Named late on a Friday afternoon by the same guy who named New Road.
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