As more subdivisions are built in Haywood County, land isn’t the only hot commodity. Good road names have come under increasing demand.

“Everyone wants nice mountainous names that suit the area, and when you already have a lot of those names taken, it’s hard to come up with new names. At this point, with as many names as we have established, you do have to be creative,” said Kathy Hoglen, the Haywood County address coordinator. For 10 years, Hoglen has had the tough job of cross-referencing developers’ lists of proposed road names and sending them back to the drawing board if the names are similar to roads already on the books.

“We’ve had some who say, ‘Why don’t you just name it for me. I’ve tried everything.’ Sometimes the harder you think, your mind just goes blank,” Hoglen said. “We’ve gotten on the Internet and looked up birds and trees and flowers and we try to keep a list for people who are stuck and can’t come up with anything.”

Hoglen also keeps an old postal zip code book handy so developers can cruise through hundreds of pages of road names in other cities and states for inspiration.

The demand for new road names, however, extends beyond new subdivisions.

“The county ordinance says anytime you have two or more houses on a drive, access road, thoroughfare, whatever you want to call it, that constitutes a road name,” Hoglen said. If a father gives his son a few acres off the home place to build a house, what used to be a driveway to one home could now have two and require a name.

From talking with several developers about their road naming strategy, using family names seems to be common.

“We’ve named them after my son, myself, my husband, old dogs, horses we used to have,” said Lara Wightman, a real estate agent with Carolina Mountain Property in Haywood County, which has had to come up with more than 30 road names for various developments over the years.

During a typical road-name brainstorming session, Wightman’s mother-in-law serves as the secretary with the pad and pen, with Wightman, her husband and father-in-law throwing out ideas. They create a list at least twice as long as they need, knowing half or more of their ideas will probably be rejected.

In a recent development called Mountain Lake Forest, Clayton Lake is named after Wightman’s son, Brent Ridge Drive after her husband, and Lara Way after herself. But her daughter’s name, Brandy, was already taken, so she got left out.

“She was a little bit upset about it,” Wightman said.

At least one development company in Haywood County has avoided the hair pulling of dreaming up a long list of new road names by employing Cherokee words.

“Very few people have names like Walela, Ogana, Tawodi. The one I like the best is Kamama, which means butterfly,” said Dorie Pope, public relations manager for Smoky Mountain Retreat. “For the most part, homeowners all like it. The road names mean things like heaven, butterfly, horse, so they think it is neat. Of course, 911 just loves us to death.”

They’ve never been turned down because a proposed road name was already in use, but they have been vetoed on other grounds.

“Some are just way too difficult to pronounce,” Pope said. The last thing a 911 dispatcher needs is a frantic resident who can’t pronounce their own road name.

Some residents have gotten tripped up. The first homeowner on a road named Konusati, which means dogwood, spelled the road name wrong when ordering new checks and reporting a change in address to his insurance companies, credit cards and various bills.

“So we changed the spelling to accommodate him because it was simpler than him changing all his paperwork,” Pope said.

Phil Ferguson, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker and an independent developer, also went with the theme approach when naming the roads in a Haywood County development called Sleepy Hollow. There’s Legend Road, Hudson Valley Road, Van Tassel Drive and Rider Drive.

While there’s numerous road endings to chose from — Road, Trail, Way, Lane, Drive, Place, Trace, Heights, Park, Plaza, Terrace — Ferguson said one suffix always seemed to jump out as the clear choice.

“We could have used Rider Trail or Way, but Rider Drive was just a personal preference,” Ferguson said. Even with a creative theme, Ferguson found a few of his first choices were taken.

“You have to set vanity aside,” Ferguson said, guarding against the temptation to name roads after family members. “And you want to have a map of the county handy when you start.”

Kevin Ensley, a county commissioner and land surveyor, had to go back to the drawing board more than once when he was coming up with road names for a subdivision with several partners a few years ago. He planned to use the first and middle names of his children. Out of all the kids, his son would be a shoe in with the name Calum, Ensley thought.

“But it sounded like Caleb, and there was a Caleb Road somewhere else in Haywood County,” said Ensley. “Even if it sounds like something else, you have to be careful.”

His daughter’s name, Megan, was already taken as well. Now short a few names, he had to call the other partners in the development with a plea for ideas. Utilizing geographical features like Rushing Creek or Mountain View or defining landmarks like Oak or Hickory may sound good, but “those are all long gone,” said Ensley. But a few sons and grandsons later, they polished off the naming. That was the late 1990s. Several years and hundreds of roads later, Ensley imagines it’s really getting tough.

When Ensley is surveying lots for a new subdivision, he offers this advice to the developer: “Come up with a long list, be creative and get back to me.”