I’ve always had poor boundaries. Maybe that’s why I’m always so fascinated (if a bit off-put) when existing neighborhoods get new names and redrawn borders. What makes a place itself, and not somewhere else? What does it mean to be from a place, when the green screen behind you can project an entire library of backgrounds?

I first noticed this phenomenon when Boston’s mildly scrubby Downtown Crossing (where my great-grandparents used to meet for dinner when my great-grandfathers were in law school at Northeastern) became the posh-er, more upwardly mobile Ladder District. Since then, it seems like the neighborhoods around me are in a constant swirl of renaming: the stretch of Divisadero where we once lived went from Western Addition to NoPa almost without our noticing, and our current corner of Lower Haight maintains a constantly fluctuating border with the Duboce Triange.

So I was thrilled, in that funny little name-place in my head, when I stumbled across this article in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning. The Financial District is now the Barbary Coast (again?)! Cole Valley is a real neighborhood (apparently it wasn’t before?)! It’s all very exciting.

And this is hardly new. According to my extensive internet research, my own little Lower Haight is a fairly recent phenomenon, newly carved from the Fillmore and the Western Addition. And before that it was called Midtown! Who knew!?

So I’m trying to get in the spirit of things. I’ve started referring to NoPa, where my friend Jason lives, as NoJaHo (North of Jason’s House, adjacent to SoJaHo, WeJaHo, and InJaHo). My apartment is located in the SoSaPaLo neighborhood (South of the Safeway Parking Lot). And Brian insists on referring to the parts of the Inner Sunset near the DeYoung Museum and the Academy of Sciences as “the Judah,” an appellation that invariably confuses all that hear it, but I’ve determined to make my peace with it. But why do we name neighborhoods in the first place? Is it so we can define the boundary of ‘us’ against ‘them’? Is it all a scam perpetrated by real estate moguls?

Do you have a name for wherever you are?