I went out late at
night recently and looked up at the sky, so starry it seemed like a bad but
beautiful case of chicken-pocks had taken it over. It got me thinking of all the places I have
lived and place names I’ve had to negotiate.
Growing up in Silver Lake, I was surrounded by the
artificially created world of Sir Walter Scott.
Though, as a child, I never realized it.
The founders of the Silver Lake neighborhood opted for the bucolic
characters of a long-dead foreign author as inspiration when naming the
streets and landmarks of my childhood home.
I attended Ivanhoe Elementary School and walked home along Rowena and
Hyperion Boulevards. I had friends who lived on Waverley Drive and I frequently
passed Locksley, Kenilworth and Avenel Streets.
I’m not quite sure how Hyperion got thrown into the mix; I do remember
thinking that these names seemed a bit odd and cumbersome, but they were just
part of where I lived. Angus Street had
a particularly nice ring to it. It was
simple and straightforward.
Then I went away to college in Williamsburg, Virginia and
the Scottish names of Silver Lake gave way Native American ones. There was the Rappahonich River, Chincoteague,
Appomattox and Manassas, mixed in the many “burgs” and “villes” of Charlotte,
Frederick, Harris, Peter and William.
Later, I lived in Stockholm, Sweden for a year. Here, my home was on Vallhallavagen,
surrounded by Korsvarsvagen and Roselagstull.
The neighboring towns had names like Eskilstuna, Norrkoping and
Uppsala. No longer did Hyperion seem so
odd.
Another move took me to Scotland, where I had to master not only
the appropriate pronunciations, but navigate yet another set of unfamiliar and
multi-syllabic names. Achiltibuie, Drmmnadrochit, Auchtermuchty and
Ballachulish gave my slightly dyslexic brain a run for its money.
This probably prepared me for a stint in the Pacific
Northwest. The pronunciations were
different, but the syllabic soup continued with Sammamish, Snoqualmie,
Snohomish, Stillaguamish and Mukilteo.
Just as they became familiar, I moved again. This time is was to the mother of long,
vowel-ridden names—second only to those in the Welsh countryside. (See picture above!)
Upon landing in Hawaii, I quickly learned that the letter
“K” was king; sometimes quite literally.
Kalakaua, Kalanioloeole and Kapiolani were roads named for former
monarchs. Wahiawa, Waimanalo. Waipahu, Kaaawa
and Hauula were nearby communities. The
state fish is a Humuhumunukunukuapua”a
and Papahanaumokuakea is the newly created marine reserve. I lived in a neighborhood with a ten-letter
name on an eight-letter street. Names commandeered from Matson ships. After 25 years on the island, I was able to
laugh as I listened to the voice on a rental car GPS trying to pronounce
Haleakula and Kahului in an almost unrecognizable way.
But my most recent transition, and maybe my last, is to a place
that suits me just fine and gives my syllabically challenged brain a much-needed
rest. The town has merely one, lone
syllable and only four letters: Bend. Too bad the name of my street isn’t just
plain old Elm. But it’s not. Got to have some syllables somewhere.
