Your home deserves a name, here’s how to choose one

If we asked you to tell us what the house at 1491 Mill Run Road, Mill Run, Pennsylvania, looked like or who designed it, could you tell us off the top of your head? What if we instead asked what Fallingwater looked like, or who designed it? Give a house – your house– A name that reminds him and embodies him. Knowing what Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Pennsylvania house on the waterfall looked like starts with its name, along with every other famous house – real or fictional. Whether you’re in your forever home or living that rental life, we think you should name your home and any future homes to come.

Actress Hilarie Burton Morgan One Tree Hill Fame recently appeared on the haunted house podcast, Dark houseShe talked about her new book, Grimoire girl. In the book, I address the topic of naming a house entirely in favor of the verb. “Naming something is how we all show affection,” she writes. Your sanctuary serves as the physical manifestation of your goals and values, as all interior designs do.

Giving it a fun or whimsical title only solidifies your home’s aesthetic further and adds to its communal nature. Barbie didn’t call it her “Dream House” for nothing! Even when Ken moved in (Destroy In), he renamed the space his Mojo Dojo Casa House, to commemorate this new identity and completely reshape the energy. Best of all, there are no rules: as different life stages come and go, you can redesign your abode however you like.

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Giving something a name gives it an identity, connecting you to it in the process, and the same goes for houses. Specifically, in fact Dark house nature, Haunted Houses. To give a house a name is to anthropomorphize it, and if you leave it without a name and without an identity, you leave its story incomplete. Once you give it an individual character, you connect with the space and everyone who lived there in the past. As Morgan explains on the podcast, naming a house shows respect for its history, recognizing that many others before you have lived their lives within it and left their own energy behind. When you move out of an unnamed residence — your old residence hauntedWe must say – you are allowing him to be viewed in a way stripped of his true identity. There’s a reason Morgan named the place she lived in her twenties “Hester’s House,” after the ghostly roommate she used to occupy the place with.

The naming of houses goes back centuries in rural England. Before street names and numbering locations were common, communities named their living spaces. They will confirm ownership of the land by giving it a title, and rename the house when a new person begins to occupy the space, whether entirely or as an additional person. It was not uncommon to modify names as living circumstances changed, perhaps with a hyphen or hyphen, which is how some women today choose to handle their last names after marriage.

How do I name my house?

If you’re convinced to go ahead with naming your home but don’t know where to start, Morgan has shared some ideas in her book to get your creative juices flowing.

• Name it after the thing you love most, such as a pet or even something related to popular culture. “Raven’s Rest is a good name for you all One Tree Hill “The fans are there,” Morgan writes.
• Name it after a wild creature that frequents your town or a local landmark. Coyote Crossing was another property Morgan and her husband, actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, considered when searching for a home.
• Name it after the vitality or energy of the place. Morgan once lived in a small cabin that she called The Ramble Inn. It was “a kind of earthy hangout where one could wander around and rest informally and contently.”
• Name it after a feature of your home. We assume you can guess why the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts has its name.
• Call it just one wordlike Elvis’ Graceland or Falling Water.
• Call it something very literal. In her book, this is where Morgan first refers to Hester’s house, and explains that she named it after her ghostly roommate.

Whatever name you choose for your home, even if it seems silly at first, it will change your energy and connection to the place you live.

To hear more creepy ghost stories, subscribe to our Haunted House Podcast Dark house On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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Assistant editor

Megan is associate editor at Beautiful house She writes about interior design, pop culture, and furniture.