If we asked you to tell us what the house on 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 asked instead what Fallingwater looked like, or who designed it? Giving a house—your home—a name memorializes and personifies it. Knowing what Frank Lloyd Wright‘s famous Pennsylvanian house on the waterfall looks like starts with its name, along with any other well-known house—real or fiction. 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 of One Tree Hill fame recently appeared on our haunted house podcast, Dark House, and spoke of her new book, Grimoire Girl. In the book, she tackles the subject of naming one’s house, completely in favor of the act. “Naming something is how we all show affection,” she writes. Your sanctuary serves as the physical manifestation of your goals and values, as all interiors do.
Giving it a playful or whimsical title only solidifies your home’s aesthetic more and increases its communal nature. Barbie didn’t call it her Dream House for nothing! Even when Ken moved in (broke in), he renamed the space to his Mojo Dojo Casa House, memorializing this new identity and reshaping the energy entirely. The best part is there are no rules: As different life phases come and go, you can rechristen your dwelling however many times you like.
Giving something a name gives it an identity, connecting you to it in the process, and it’s the same with houses. Specifically, in true Dark House nature, haunted houses. To give a home a name is to anthropomorphize it, and if you’re leaving it nameless and without an identity, you’re leaving its story unfinished. Once you give it individuality, you’re connecting with the space and all who lived there in the past. As Morgan explains in the podcast, naming a house is showing respect for its history, recognizing that potentially many others before you have lived their own lives inside it and left their own energy behind. When you move on from an unnamed dwelling—your old haunt, we should say—you’re allowing it to be perceived in a way that’s stripped of its true identity. There’s a reason why Morgan named the place she lived in her twenties “Hester’s House,” after the ghostly roommate that occupied the space with her.
Naming houses goes back centuries to rural England. Before street names and numbering locations was common, communities would title their places of living. They would assert ownership over the land by giving it a moniker, renaming the home when someone new began occupying the space, whether that be in full or as an additional person. It wasn’t uncommon to modify the names as living conditions changed, possibly with a hyphen or a dash, the way some women today choose to do with their last names after they get married.
How Do I Name My Home?
If you’ve been convinced to go forward with naming your home but don’t know where to start, Morgan shared some ideas in her book to get your creative juices flowing.
- Name it after what you love most, like a pet or even something pop culture related. “Raven’s Rest is a good name for all you One Tree Hill fans out there,” Morgan writes.
- Name it after a wild creature that frequents your town or local landmark. Coyote Crossing was another Morgan and her husband, actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, thought of when house hunting.
- Name it after a vibe or energy of a place. Morgan once lived in a tiny cabin she called The Ramble Inn, it “was the kind of earthy hangout where one could just ramble up and rest, casual and content.”
- Name it after a feature of your home. We’re assuming you can guess why the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts is named the way it is.
- Name it only one word, like Elvis’s Graceland or Fallingwater.
- Name it something super literal. In her book, this is where Morgan first references Hester’s House, explaining that she named it that after her ghostly roommate.
Whatever name you choose for your house, even if it feels silly at first, will change the energy and your connection with the place you’re inhabiting.
To hear more spooky ghost stories, subscribe to our haunted house podcast Dark House on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen.
Follow House Beautiful on Instagram.
