Home by any other name

[muckefuck]

How do you refer to past residences (particularly to someone who's lived/visited them)? Looking back at mine, the breakdown is as follows:

• Street name (e.g. "Theodore Avenue"): 5
• Building/house name (e.g. "Basler Tor"): 4
• Municipality/Neighbourhood (e.g. "Troy"): 2
• Nickname (e.g. "the Roach Motel"): 2
• Owner's name (e.g. "Grandma's"): 0

Overall, a pretty consistent pattern of street names for freestanding houses and building names for multiresidential buildings, particularly dormitories. Exceptions include my previous apartment (the building didn't have a distinctive name, so I refer to it by street) and my last family residence (I was the one who pioneered the use of a nickname, "Three Birches", to replace the street name/owner's name conventions in use). I haven't had much need to refer to my current apartment as anything besides "my place", but when I do, I'll probably use the building name, MDA.

What's the breakdown for y'all? What possibilities have I left out?

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Street number (i.e. "5142"). A lot of people seem to use that.

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

I lived in three different places in Chicago, but managed to live on only two streets. So street name never was very useful. In San Francisco, I find that referring to my first apartment on Albion as "#$@#%$@! cardboard" works rather well. Otherwise, municipality/state/country works for me.

Linguisticly interesting perhaps: I've started to refer to my apartment as a "house" or "home", or used terms usually applying to a free-standing building that one owns in the clear. Considering that I'm ready enough to abandon my current domicile whenever I figure out what to do with my life or enf buys a house and needs a subletter, I figure that means I've been in one place long enough for odd things to happen. And its probably time to move.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

By municipality if it's a former residence of my own, by owner's name if other. My grandmother's house in VT has a name (Innisfree), but I only use that with people who already know it, as I can't be bothered to explain.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

And I almost universally use street name if the person I'm talking to knows the city I'm talking about, and municipality otherwise.

In order of my living there

[pheret1.livejournal.com]

Street name (Lakeview Lane)
Address (1008 - pronounced "ten-oh-eight")
Description (First Apartment)
City (Westmont)
Description (The Townhouse)
Complex (Four Lakes)
Street name (Briarcliffe)
Neighborhood (St. Ben's)

Generational Differences

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

My grandfather worked as head groundskeeper/chauffer/handyman for a number of familes, and brought my grandmother and their children from one gatekeeper's cottage to another. The family referred to these homes by the employer's surname, the Ansbachers, the Ijams, the Setons and so on.

My parents's siblings often moved to different homes within the same community and the nomenclature switched to street names: Tanglewood (Crossing), Carman Ave., Bedford (St.) and Martin Ave. Interestingly the words crossing and street were dropped from family refences, yet avenue was kept in both instances.

Living in the unfashionable outer boroughs of New York, I switch between Queens, the borough's name, or Woodside, the community within. Places I lived in the suburb are occasionally recalled by the name of the village, Malverne, but are usually lumped together as the (Long) Island.

My sisters have both maintained the habit of moving multiple times within a single community. The elder has had three separate homes since married. She uses street names for all three; only the latter two are in the same community. The younger sister (though older than me) has had five different addresses in one community and has called them each by their street name. She has since had two different addresses in a new community. The first of these two, in order to show a clear break with her serial addresses in the other town, she referred to by the name of the new town. Having moved again(!) she now refers to both places in town two by their street names.

Somehow I thought this was going to be a far shorter entry when I started.

Oops. The other grandparents retired from Long Island to Florida and upstate New York. The former home on Long Island, Clinton St., the home in Florida, Florida, and the home in Thousand Island Park on Wellesley Island, NY, as the River.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

My great-grandfather was a groundskeeper as well. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anyone alive who recalls how he referred to his residences.

Neighborhoods

[(Anonymous)]

Mine are almost all neighborhoods - Richmond Hill, Forest Hills, Hyde Park ... except for Harrison, which still gets called "home" sometimes.

The house in upstate NY has always been "the farm" even though the last time it was a working dairy farm was circa 1945.

-e

"the farm"

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

of the several small working farmland areas in my family, "the farm" refers to the home and various surrounding area my grandparents owned at one point. I don't know if anything is being farmed on it at the moment. Everything else is by last name (all now different).

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

I don't actually recall my grandfather using the terms; he died when I was 7. Rather I heard these from my late grandmother who lived until I was 30.

[welcomerain.livejournal.com]

I refer to all my places of residence in Iowa City as "Iowa."

If other people lived there (in Iowa City) with me, and they know what I am talking about, we use the name of the house to refer to it (i.e. Place of Crangela, House of Snide, House of Chaos, Bonsai Oaks).