Drive through the Hunter’s Gate subdivision in north Columbia, and you’ll find yourself navigating through streets with names like Gazelle Drive, Caribou Lane, Antelope Court and Rhino Boulevard. While none of these animals actually roam free in our fair state, I’m sure the street names alone have caused hunters from all over Missouri to relocate in Columbia just for the chance to purchase a house on Wildebeest Drive. I mean, who could pass that up?
Renaming streets and subdivisions to attract people with certain professions and hobbies seems like a great way to reinvigorate the slumping housing market. Imagine living in Chemist’s Haven, where your children would play on Valence Avenue or Sodium Lane. Or in Banker’s Hill, where you can take evening walks on Compound Interest Boulevard or Money Market Avenue. And what self-respecting physician would want to live on Green Meadows Road when he or she could be hanging out on Spleen Drive?
It might just be that I am getting older and fussier, but it seems like names and titles nowadays are either so contrived or change so often that they don’t mean much.
There are a large number of efforts to rename programs, institutions and products to increase their appeal, but I have yet to see any evidence that the renaming has any positive effect. If anything, there is a real danger that the renaming might have a negative effect. Of course, Missouri’s higher education system has been taking the lead in the renaming game with several of the state’s top institutions taking on new monikers in recent years.
Businesses also use this technique to try to cast off bad Mojo as well. United Telephone served the central west part of Missouri for years and generally did a crappy job. So what was the solution? To increase customer service and invest in their infrastructure? No, they changed their name to Sprint United, and then just Sprint. And when that didn’t seem to reduce the call volume at the customer complaint department, they changed their name to Embarq, until they were finally bought out by CenturyTel.
Many sailors believed that renaming a ship will bring bad luck to the vessel and its crew. Apparently, Neptune – the god of the sea – records the name of every vessel in his “Ledger of the Deep,” and if a captain just up and renames his ship, it screws up Neptune’s records and provokes his anger. Accordingly, captains must remove all evidence of the current name from the boat before taking on the new name if they are to avoid having a cursed ship. Apparently, this makes it easier for Neptune to keep his records straight.
You still see Embarq logos on service trucks all across western Missouri. Perhaps that explains why these name change exercises haven’t worked.
Portions of this post were first printed in the Columbia Daily Tribune in an article by the author.
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