Costa Packet, Gertieville and Samsue are all odd house names. Jo Haywood talks

to Malton writer Joyce Miles who has spent 20 years researching the subject for her new book.

If doctors return home to Bedsyde Manor and policemen to Evening Hall, do newly-published authors lay down their pens at Dunscribblin? It is a question only Joyce Miles can answer.

After 20 years of research she has written her first book probing the myths, motives and memories that lead ordinary people to give their homes extraordinary names.

Her interest in the subject was first sparked by childhood walks during which she would try to come up with logical reasons why people had called their inland home Sea View or their compact terrace Greenacres.

This spark was re-ignited some years later when she moved from Leeds to Oxford and found herself in a numbered house with an 'a' suffix in a street littered with numbers and letters.

"The poor postman didn't know whether he was coming or going," says Joyce, speaking from her as yet unnamed Malton home.

"I went to the library to get a book about house names and found there wasn't one.

"I immediately saw this as a great opportunity and bounced home with a mission to get to the bottom of our need for naming our homes."

Her work came to the attention of renowned linguist Dr Basil Cottle, who invited her to write a thesis for a Master of Literature degree looking at the naming patterns of 22 settlements, from seaside towns to London suburbs.

She found that transferred place names, from favourite holiday spots, birthplaces or previous homes, were particularly popular.

"People in the north tended to go for something in the south like St Ives, while southerners opted for a northern name like Windermere," says Joyce.

"After the war when we started travelling abroad more, names like Torremolinos and Costa Brava began creeping in. Then of course came the witty responses, such as Costa Packet."

Her later studies took her to Leicester where she began a Ph.D.

"Contrary to popular belief you can't actually do a Ph.D in house names so I studied the rise of the suburbs," she said.

Joyce's work began to attract attention from the public and she soon found her mailbag bulging with humorous, poignant, personal and often downright silly house names from around the country.

Many of these are included in Owl's Hoot: How People Name their Houses, the synthesis of her 20 years work, recently published in hardback by John Murray at £9.99.

Not surprisingly some names crop up again and again. Rose Cottage and Greenacres, for instance, are still hugely popular, as are other names from nature.

"One of my favourites that I came across is a house that was called Meadow View," said Joyce. "Unfortunately an office block was built directly in front of it and, with great wit and good humour, the owners simply changed the name to Weadavu."

Local history and dialect come closely on the tail of nature when it comes to popularity - particularly in Yorkshire.

"I think people in Yorkshire are proud of their history and dialect and want to keep it alive," said Joyce. "Giving their home a distinctive local name is a fine way of doing it."

Some of the Yorkshire-isms she has encountered are Wotchit, a rather more interesting version of The Orchard, Yertiz, a proud shout of Here It Is, and Phos-an-Las, a distinctly more poetic allusion to First and Last.

Over the years Joyce has lived in The Owl House, The Spinney and Hawkstone House. The latter is the Oxford home which marked the start of her quest, which she eventually named after local historian William Hawkstone.

"The house was actually made of stone and my husband and I are both keen bird watchers, so it seemed highly appropriate," she said.

Now in her adopted home of Malton she has discovered that more and more people are naming their homes after themselves.

Traditional names like Algernon Lodge and Gertieville prove this is nothing new, but it is only in recent years that couples have decided to put their names together to create a hybrid house name.

In her neighbourhood alone she has come across Kenvera (presumably the abode of Ken and Vera) and Samsue (home of... oh come on, you can work that one out for yourselves).

"You have to be careful though," Joyce warned. "I came across one couple, Irene and Albert, who ended up with Renal."

So is this need to name our homes a quintessentially English quirk?

Apparently not. Joyce is about to take her studies to Australia and New Zealand, where she will look at aboriginal and maori names.

"People all over the world, from England to India, feel the need to name their homes," she says.

"I'm pleased to say I still have a lot of work to do."