House Names

Spent the morning leafleting for my cousin. It was a crisp and sunny Autumn day, and had a bit of a chill about it. Spending a morning walking up people's paths and seeing their houses was very interesting today, especially in the posh parts of Brighton. To see up-close all the lovely houses some people live in, and ponder the fact that I will likely never have one. While doing this today, one thought struck me; why exactly do people name their houses? They already have a number. They surely just by that know that that is their house, and presumably what it looks like. Why must people persistently give names to the building that they live in?


Names like 'Braeburn Cottage' - citing some tenuous link to Scottish ancestry perhaps? Not sure it should really qualify as a good house name in Brighton then. 'The Coach House' - doesn't look like the building was old enough to be an old coach house. 
I remember a walk in the countryside not long ago and couldn't believe the number of houses out in this tiny village that had names. It seemed like every house had a name. The worst example I found was a house called 'Allison', which surely is a person's name! Why would you name your bloody house Allison? It doesn't even hold any clues to local history or a quiet nod to ancestry, it is literally a woman's name, or a man's name in America. 
Unless maybe the owners late wife was called Allison and she was as fat as a house, and this proved an amusing daily reminder for him.
As I delivered leaflets to 'Rose Cottage' (no roses), 'White Cottage' (fair enough on that one, it was white - and a cottage), 'The Laurel's' (?),  'Wayside', 'Springfield', 'Greenacres', and dozens more, I became more perplexed.


I vowed that if I ever own a big enough house that I had to give it a name, I would call it 'I Am A Big Wanker'.