A noun is a person, place or thing. Instinctively, I read that first sentence in the sing-song manner of the classic Schoolhouse Rock jingle. The catchy song taught me the generic labels we used to identify objects, locations or beings. But when we need to relate to something at a deeper level we use a personal noun to identify it.

I once knew a couple who could not agree on a name for their new baby. For the first five months of its life, they called it “baby” until they finally named her “Rudiger”. I haven’t kept in touch with them, but I’m sure the name “Rudiger” stands out among girl scouts and pageant contestants better than the generic noun “baby” would have.

To a lesser degree, our new land is no exception. Similar to the indecisive couple, we owned “the land”, as we creatively called it, four months before granting it an identify. I was completely alone in this effort because neither the teacher nor the prodigy had any desire or appreciation for naming a piece of land. This exercise garnered more than my usual dose of moaning and eye-rolling. Despite their discontent, they humored me. Thinking back, I believe patronized more accurately reflects their support.

I was the only one who wanted to name the land, but I solicited the family’s opinion. Experience taught me their disinterest would turn to disenchantment if they were excluded from the decision. The teacher argued the name “land” seemed adequate. After all, who ever heard of naming land? My response was, “Have you ever heard of Texas?”. The prodigy liked the name “george”. Can you tell how inspired they were?

The most important thing I learned from this experience is not to poll the family. Anyway, we had our ideas, and struggled to agree on one, but we all agreed we needed a name that described the property or the feeling we had when visiting it. We explored all the cliche names “paradise”, “heaven”, “sunset”, but even I didn’t want it to sound hokey, so we looked to the site features for inspiration.

Tree, path, rock, cactus, breeze, flower…hmm, there certainly was a lot of rock and we used large boulders as landscape features. Yes, it should have something to do with rock. The rock was hard and stable. We like the symbolism. In contrast there were many plants on site. We planted rosemary and lantana and we liked both because they were hearty, indiginous plants. Lantana has a pleasant natural aroma and great color. That’s it, we will call it “Lantana Rock” because the rock is a prominent feature symbolizing longevity and the lantana symbolizes our presence here. So let it be known this day, we christen this land “Lantana Rock” a name with the same exclusivity as a female Rudiger.