What’s in a name?

A while ago I was taken to task for referring to the place I live in now as “a cottage”. Well, you know, I can’t think of a better description - it’s not a flat/apartment as it’s a self contained dwelling with its own front door to the world, rather than being part of a block of similar dwellings - It could be called a house, I guess, but that - to me - implies something bigger than a 2 up, 2 down building.

And then that started me thinking about this whole thing around what we call the places we live in, which is additionally complicated by the fact that the Americans among us use different terms than the British (so what’s new there!!!)

The first place I rented after leaving my parents house was the top rooms of a house; we had a kitchen, bedroom and sitting room/living room/lounge (now don’t get me started on the differences there!!!!), and the owners lived in the bottom half of the building. We had one front door and one address between the two dwellings, and we shared a bathroom. I called it a “flat”, and I’m fairly comfortable with that description, except that it implies to me that we have private facilities - maybe “rooms” would have been a better description.

The next place I lived in (and the first place I owned) was a maisonette. Now, I’m not even sure we use that term anymore, but at the time it meant a dwelling that was self contained and had its own entrance to the world - it was this latter point that differentiated a maisonette from a flat: flats had some sort of communal area where you entered from the street, and then their own front door to the accommodation. At the time it made a difference - a maisonette was worth more than a flat!

Then I moved to a house - a “semi-detached” house, which means that there were two dwellings connected together - I had 3 outside walls and one party wall. The hierarchy of price is detached most expensive, semi-detached and then terraced least expensive. In terraced homes, all the houses are joined together - you just have two outside walls. But it doesn’t tell you anything about size or number of rooms or - well - much else really! A house can be 2 or more stories high - with or without cellar, but if it’s only one story, then it’s a bungalow. Bungalows can be detached, semi-detached or terraced - at least in principle I guess they can - I’ve never seen terraced bungalows, but I would assume they exist. And then there are Town Houses - these are terraced houses on 3 floors, often with a garage as part of the ground floor of the building.

So what is a cottage? Interesting question - I think the only way to distinguish it from a house is that it’s a smaller place, and the term has connotations of rural cosiness. So this is a cottage :)

So much for the UK - but when I turn to the US I get even more confused. The term “flat” that we use would appear to be translated to “apartment” AND “condo”. It took me a while to get this distinction in my head because when I talk of a flat, I’m talking about a physical type of dwelling, so a flat can be rented or owned. And so I assumed that this was the case in the US and looked for the difference between the building types. And so, when I saw two identical buildings, one of apartments and the other condos I was REALLY confused! But eventually I got it - there is no physical difference, but an apartment is rented, but f it’s owned, it’s called a condo!

Nor is that all! At least in the part of the US where I found this out, a bungalow is normally 2 stories, with the 2nd story being in the loft - if I had to call this anything in the UK, I’d guess I’d call it a chalet style house. I kind of think that “duplex” is what I refer to as a semi-detached - except that in New York they have duplex apartments and so, like the distinction between apartment and condo, I may well be getting confused.

Again!