God Committed the Original Sin

We’ve all seen them — these contrived little mini-communities with perfect
landscaping and uppity names. Here’s how to name one. Pick any two of the
following things and put them together:

• Pine

• View

• Crest

• White

• Creek

• Manor

• Stone

• River

• Heights

• Brook

• Green

• Cedar

• Acres

• Meadow

• Haven

• Ridge

So, we end up with:

• Cresthaven

• Pineridge

• Cedarheights

• Brookstone

• [ etc., ad nauseam ]

Of course we know now what this is about—signaling to buyers that they’re
important, and signaling to the buyers’ friends and colleagues and potential
matest that they’re important.

These are all words that invoke thoughts of wealth and success, so they are
endlessly combined to form some modicum of uniqueness, despite their obvious
similarity.

It would be really interesting to track the names that are used for these
over time, similar to baby names, to see what words and names are
aspirational at any given point in time.

Often, the older aspirational names and words become starkly negative, like
Ethyl, or Althea. People aren’t likely to name their daughters those names
anytime soon because they’re stuck in the past.

Perhaps subdivisions called PineCreek Cove will soon have a similar negative
connotation—perhaps linked to a time when we were obsessed with wanting to
sound better than everyone else.

One can dream.