Apartment Complex Names

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who is this?

This is Catherine from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Well, hello, Catherine. Welcome to the program.

Hey, Catherine.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, it’s our pleasure. What can we do for you?

Well, I am finding it kind of irritating that there’s so many apartment complexes and office parks that are named after natural landscapes that are nowhere to be seen.

Huh.

For example, since I was driving down the highway on I-69 here in Indiana, and there was a big, giant apartment complex sitting right on the highway, and it was called Bayview Apartments.

And I don’t think there are any bays in Indiana.

Not many.

Maybe on some artificial lakes.

You’re so right.

Let’s push in it.

Catherine, you’re so right.

Who are the people who come up with these names?

Optimists.

I think they’re the same ones who name the paint chips, you know, when you go to paint your house.

I mean, it’s crazy, right?

I don’t think there’s any special qualifications for the people who get to choose these names.

Maybe it’s just because they want something that’s evocative of another place, a foreign clime or the Mediterranean or something else.

Maybe they’re just trying to make it seem exotic.

And, you know, if you live in the plains where there are no bays, maybe a Bayview apartment sounds really great.

But it just kind of seems like a slap in the face, too.

Yeah, you know, you’re not the first one to notice this.

There’s a Sesame Street movie starring Big Bird called Follow That Bird.

And he ends up in, I believe it’s Oceanside, Illinois.

There’s no Oceanside, Illinois.

Yeah.

I think there must be some kind of formula for naming these subdivisions, you know, where you take the name of the natural habitat that you’re destroying and then you put it on the sign there.

You know, I mean, I used to drive past this place where they kept clearing the trees and clearing the trees.

And then they put up this subdivision and they called it the Woods of St. Thomas.

And I’m thinking, where are the woods?

The woods are gone.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

They named the place.

They named the various streets after the trees they tore down to build the streets.

Yeah, yeah.

Or the wildlife.

Yes, yes.

The Deer Creek Path neighborhood.

Right.

A lot of runs, a lot of crossings, mallard crossings.

Where are the mallards?

Well, I hesitate to say this because I know these houses aren’t empty and these subdivisions are full, right?

And there are people that live there and they have great lives and they’re good folks and stuff.

But in my opinion, the names of those subdivisions are about as soulless as the architecture of the houses that are in them.

Whoa.

What do you think about that, Catherine?

Ouch.

Well, I’m just saying.

You know, when I grew up in Missouri, there’s a beautiful countryside that’s just vanished.

And it’s covered now with cul-de-sacs and just terrible, terrible condos and just ugly stuff.

Just ugly, ugly, ugly.

And it’s gone.

What used to be a beautiful green forest and probably wasn’t first growth, but it was still wonderful.

It’s gone.

Completely gone. And it’ll be 100 years before it ever grows back, if it ever does.

And now there’s an office park there named Lush Grove.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I love that. But you know, one of the things, to get a little serious about this, one of the things that happens is that these developments are often designed on a national level.

So it might be somebody in Chicago who’s working up the plans for this place.

And what he’s going to do is use these plans all around the country.

And it’s entirely possible that when the name Bayview Apartments was coined, it wasn’t coined just for one set of buildings, that it was coined for many, and they just used the same name every place.

So it’s not necessarily that this is all done on a local level.

You can buy whole subdivision plans, kind of like lock, stock, and barrel from the blueprints all the way down to the last nail and just roll it out.

I’m not comforted.

Bless your heart.

Yeah, I’m with you on that.

But let me ask you kind of an inverse of this.

What would you call it?

Yeah, I guess no one would want to live in an apartment called Highway Side.

Between two ditches.

There’s a wonderful one here in our town that really sits right on the highway.

It’s just totally out in the open.

It’s an apartment complex, and it’s called Hidden Point.

And does it have an E?

They always have an E on the end of Point.

Oh, right. It’s Hidden Pointy.

Yeah, Hidden Pointy.

Be sure when you get a chance to find, there’s a Billy Collins poem called The Golden Years, and it makes fun of this same little issue.

Oh, really?

Check it out and enjoy that. It’s a great poem.

Okay. Thank you so much for calling, Catherine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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