What a revolting development

If this is the biggest deal I can grumble about today, I guess I am pretty well blessed.  But for crying out loud, could the developers of new housing developments around here be a little more creative with the names of their, well, developments...and street names.

I'm sure this happens all over the world.  Let's say the more desirable section of your town is called "Swankytown" by those who live there and by those who wish they did.  The seedier section, with the car parts in the yard and the brothers-in-law wearing wifebeaters while sitting on folding patio chairs in the front yard, hooting at passersby and teasing the bloodhound, let's call that "Skidville."

There is no more land available to build new houses in Swankytown, so builders will buy former gravel pits and farm dumping sites in Skidville, lay down 1/4" of topsoil, and start building houses on 1/5 acre lots in new developments called "Swankytown Overlook," "The Reserve at Swankytown East," and "Swank's Choice."  From all of these sites, you wouldn't want to have to walk to Swankytown proper without packing a nice lunch.

Then the developer starts naming the streets.  Now that every Scottish, Irish and English town name in the atlas has been used for road names in Baltimore County, they have taken to naming streets for their own grandchildren, so you pass streets named "Heather Nicole Court" or "Brooklyn Grace Drive."  Or the portmanteau streets, from chopping up names, e.g. "Logagail Lane" or "Makaymonic Place."  



It gets worse when developers can't spell. Right around the corner from us is "Britinay La", the result of someone who can't spell Brittany and has forced everyone who lives there to repeat, a thousand times a year, "No, it's B-R-I-T-I-N-A-Y!"   And just the other day, we saw a road down in Cowenton, a part of town that is doing all it can to be called "White Marsh." That road is called "Morning Dove Way," but a quick googlization shows the same mistake being made in Oceanside, California and Marsing, Idaho.

I'm officially in mourning for the English language.