A guy named Bill Shakespeare once wrote “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
And that got me thinking. And not just how much I disliked trying to read Romeo & Juliet in high school. True story: that is the only required reading I ever went “cliff’s notes” for in high school because I just couldn’t comprehend what the heck was going on in the prose.
No, it got me thinking about names and what they mean for businesses. Someone recently asked me why I didn’t name my company Boyanoski PR? The main reason is my last name is hard to pronounce so I wanted something easy to say and easy for people to remember. So, I went with Complete.
But there is more. Our team sometimes work with companies and agencies that go through name changes to better tell their story. They are still the same company, it’s just they have changed in a way that makes a new name a must. For examples, 3Fold recently rebranded to better show they are now a growth agency, not just a web company.
And that is got us thinking about what names could be changed in the Upstate. With so many new people and faces here, is it time to rename some of our more less than apt monikers? Here is a short list:
- Paris Mountain. It was allegedly named after Richard Pearis, the first white settler in the region. However, someone lost the “e” somewhat in the same way that Pearis lost all of his land after the American Revolution. This change would be a benefit for mapmakers and school teachers who give a darn, but it likely won’t happen. Too many people with money already have Paris Mountain addresses. And too many people run the road race over the mountain every year.
- Greenville. Let’s go back to the original name of Pleasantburg. We already have an awesome roadway named after it. And there are like 30 other Greenvilles out there already. This isn’t going to happen despite mapmakers requests because, frankly, #yeahthatpleasantburg doesn’t look or sound right.
- Greer. Everyone pronounces it Grrrr. Just take out the “ee” and everyone is a winner.
- Any street that doesn’t connect all the way through. Why does East North Street suddenly stop downtown and magically start over again a mile away? Because. That’s why. One of them has to go. We say turn the downtown one into Knox Street.
- The Lakes. Hartwell, Keowee, Secession, Strom Thurmond…they are all just one big man-made lake. Give them one name. We say Lake BMW.
This is our list. What do you think needs to be renamed?
