I don’t live anywhere.  I used to live somewhere, but I moved and where I live now isn’t anyplace, at least not a place with a name.  It’s just a house in Lakewood, on a street, with a number.  That’s all.

The condominium where I used to live (in Rocky River, since you asked) is one of a group known collectively as Golden Oaks, although I can’t tell you why.  There are no oaks, golden or otherwise, anywhere on the grounds.  Just a few small crab apples near the balcony and a couple of locust trees in the back.

Not far from Golden Oaks is a smaller group of condos called Riverbank Estates.  They’re nice enough, I suppose, although I think calling them estates is stretching things a little, and they’re at least three miles from the nearest river.  As for banks, well, the closest ones are at the mall, and those are only branch offices.

One of my friends used to live in a place called the Courtyard, which, near as I can remember, didn’t have a courtyard.  In fact, I don’t think it had any yard at all, but that’s one of the things many people like about living in a condominium or an apartment.  No yard, no yard work.  Still, it doesn’t go very far toward explaining the name.

There probably hasn’t been a quail in Quail Hollow since the first bulldozer lumbered in.  Ditto for the wildlife at Whitetail Run, Fawn Lake, and the Sandpiper.  I won’t venture such a statement about Big Turtle Apartments, “big” being a relative term and therefore, like a wet turtle, a little slippery, but I’d bet the farm that neither Eagle’s Pond nor Pheasant’s Walk sports the species it’s named for.  And let’s not even discuss Bear Creek.  I mean, bears in Cleveland?  Chicago, maybe, but not Cleveland.

As for the Woodhawk development - an upscale community on the other side of town that includes apartments, town houses, cluster homes, and detached dwellings - it’s named for a nonexistent raptor.  Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to Birds East of the Rockies (a good book – ask any birder) lists no such hawk.  Neither does The Birder’s Handbook or Golden Press’ Birds of North America (a decent guide but not, in my opinion, on a par with Peterson.)  You’d think with all the money they poured into that place they could afford to name it for a real bird.

There may be a kernel of truth in the names of Walnut Hill (just one hill) and Hickory Hills (more than one hill) but if Chestnut Lake has any chestnuts, you can bet they’re imported.  Orchard Hill (also only one hill) and MacIntosh Farms may have apple trees but I feel certain there’s no citrus anywhere in Orange Tree Estates except in the residents’ refrigerators.  Orange trees are less likely in northeast Ohio than bears.

One of the few real estate entities that has any sense to its name is the Riverbend Condominiums.  This one is downtown in the Flats, and it’s right on the Cuyahoga River which, by the way, means “crooked river.”  (But you knew that.)  Purchase one of those units and if you forget where you live you know where to look for your house.  You just have to remember which bend in the crooked river.  In most cases, though, this kind of logic will get you into trouble.

Churchill Downs sounds as if it should be in Kentucky, but it’s right here in northeast Ohio.  North Church Towers ought to be in Boston, but it’s here, too.  So are Nantucket Cove, which ought to be off the coast of mainland Massachusetts, and Walden, which also belongs in Massachusetts.  As for the Alamo Apartments, they’re only about 15 miles south of my place.  Even my grasp of geography is better than that.

It gets sillier.  The nearby Village in the Park is neither a village or a park.  It’s a building with a road on one side and a parking lot on the other.  And the Islander isn’t in the East Indies or the South Seas.  It’s an apartment complex in a southwest suburb surrounded on all sides by pavement.  And the Westlake is in Rocky River.

Of course, more truthful names might not do much for occupancy or sales.  Interstate Estates and Concrete Hill lack the cachet of more bucolic monikers.  Suburban Towers and Fast Food Ridge, for all their accuracy, wouldn’t have much appeal, although I kind of like the idea of Mallview.  (On a clear day, you can see a parking space...)

If where I live were a development instead of just a block of homes, it might be called Railview, since my home is near the tracks (on the right side, of course).  Shortstop Hollow is another possibility, since the ball field is just beyond the train tracks.  Or Big Squirrel Homes.  That has a nice ring to it and would be very appropriate, given the neighborhood’s healthy population of bushytailed rodents, fed fat on the acorns of Lakewood’s many nongolden oaks.

My favorite though, is something like “Village in the City” or “City in the Town,” because it doesn’t really tell you a thing.  Just like street names and house numbers.  They convey no atmosphere, conjure up no particular ambiance.  They don’t tell anything at all about where you live.  Except, of course, exactly where it is.

From You May Already Be a Winner and Other Marginal Considerations
The Kent State University Press