As any student of mythology knows, names have power. They carry stories and identities, not just for people, but for buildings, organisations and places (among others). As Kat discussed a few weeks ago, the names given to houses can tell us a great deal about the people who named those houses and the culture and society of their time. It’s not just houses, though – commercial names also have stories to tell and can reflect wider social trends or cultural events in their branding. We can see this in contemporary company names as well as historical ones – for example, a lot of the big brands of today have short, single word names, many of which are unrelated to the product or service being sold or the people behind the company (hi, Apple!). There are considerations in the way companies are named now that are specific to this era of history – for example, names that are easily found by search algorithms on the internet (not something nineteenth century businesses had to consider). Company names can also be part of the social or cultural zeitgeist of the time, like, apparently, a fad for vaguely space-sounding company names after the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in the mid-twentieth century.
In nineteenth century Christchurch, there were all sorts of names for businesses and organisations. Some of them are amazing – I refer you to the friendly societies (you can thank me later), my favourite of which was the Royal Antedilvuian Order of Buffaloes, until I saw that there was a Ye Anciente Order of Frothblowers. There were definitely chapters of the Buffaloes in Christchurch, with the Royal Pythagorean Lodge and the Royal Jubilee Buffalo Lodge meeting in the 1880s. Unfortunately, and I am genuinely disappointed by this, I have found no trace of the Frothblowers in the city.
Businesses were perhaps a little less flamboyant in their names than friendly societies, but there is still information to be gleaned from their branding. I think this is particularly true of shops, the focus of today’s post, especially when we consider them in the context of our own relationship with consumer culture. Shops are like people, in a way – they have personalities, they have reputations, they vie for our attention and participate in performing an identity just like people do. There was even a ruling in the USA about companies being people, remember that? In all seriousness, though, consumers can have properly personal relationships with retailers (enhanced by their marketing!), relationships that involve loyalty and attachment and genuine sadness when a shop ceases to exist (the thing, of course, is that shops – and companies in general – cultivate and use that relationship to sell goods and services and cannot necessarily reciprocate those feelings of loyalty and attachment beyond the profit margin...). Identity is absolutely a key component of branding, especially in an area of commerce that needs to interact with actual people in order to be successful. Names are a big part of this, as one of the entry points to that personality the shop is trying to convey.
From the shops I’ve come across through my thesis research, which looks specifically at the supply and retail of nineteenth century household goods in Christchurch, there are three main trends in naming that have become apparent: ‘house’ names, proprietor names and what I’ve been colloquially referring to as ‘story names’. Fair warning, this is by no means an exhaustive list – it is very much just what I’ve come across from working with the archaeology and, specifically, with shops that retail household goods and fabrics. There may well be trends among other types of retailers or businesses that I’m not addressing here.
House names
This became particularly apparent when I started researching glass and china shops in Christchurch, in part because of the large number of shops – and archaeology – found on the site of Te Pae. One of these was a fancy goods store from the 1860s and 1870s called London and Paris House, which reminded me of another Tuam Street glass and china store from the 1880s known as Windsor House. London and Paris House, which began life as a drapers under the Misses Ellis in the late 1850s, could be explained as a call-back to the phrase “the best London and Paris Houses” or “the fashionable houses of London and Paris”, which appear in newspaper advertisements for clothing and fabric at the time (Lyttelton Times 17/11/1863: 6; Star 20/01/1894: 4). Windsor House, however, didn’t quite have the same association, nor did (brace yourselves..) Albion House, Granite House, Leamington House, Bradford House, Argyle House, Paris House, Glasgow House, Cashel House, Leeds House, Whately House, Hertford House, Yorkshire House, Regent House, Criterion House, Sydenham House, Waterloo House, Victoria House or Dunstable House.
A selection of artefacts from London and Paris House, 1862-1873, when it was under the proprietorship of Henry Leake. Leake took over the London and Paris House drapery established by Miss Ellis and Miss Ellis in 1859 and turned the brand into a fancy goods store. It continued to be a fancy goods store under Thomas Pillow, who took over from Leake in 1873, until 1876 (Lyttelton Times 28/01/1873:), when a man named Fountain Barber took over the premises, but got rid of the brand name (Lyttelton Times 8/12/1876: 1). Image: Jessie Garland.
Most of these reference place names, many of them also famous British places, packaged in a ‘house’ format that presumably evoked a certain stateliness and social standing. The connection to the ‘old country’ is also implicit, reminding European colonists of a part of the world that they would have associated with good taste. Most of these shops were also drapers or tailors and we can still see that naming convention in the modern fashion industry – people still refer to ‘fashion houses’. I do wonder if there was also an association – deliberate or not – with nobility and gentry implied through the use of the format, where ‘houses’ imply legacy and lineage and old establishment, reinforced by reference to historic, grand British places.
Perhaps this is what the fancy goods stores were also going for, no matter how else they marketed themselves. Windsor House, for example, was the work of C. C. Banks, easily the most creative marketer I came across in my research – as well as advertising his shop as the cheapest in Christchurch (Star 7/03/1881: 2), Charles Banks also capitalised on a local murder mystery-turned insurance fraud saga to suggest that the “finger of the severed hand pointed towards Windsor House” (Star 21/01/1886: 2).
Would this advertisement get you through the door? Star 21/01/1886: 2.
Proprietor names
Alongside the house names, there were also shop names that used the names of the proprietors and/or business owners as the brand name. Unlike something like Windsor House or London and Paris House, which relies on a cultural connection to something outside the business, proprietor names relied on the association of the shop with the person behind it, putting their reputation and involvement into the identity of the brand. This should be familiar to all of us – we still see this a lot especially with non-retail companies, although a little less than we used to, perhaps, because of other trends in branding. Here in Ōtautahi, we still have Ballantynes (J. Ballantyne and Co.), Smith’s City (Henry Cooper Smith) or Bunnings (Arthur and Robert Bunning).
In the nineteenth century, we had so many. Some of the ones we have archaeological evidence for are Gould and Miles (a general store), Sheppard and Co. (also a general store) and Dallas and Co. (auctioneers), all of them present on the site of what is now Te Pae. These names are stories of partnerships as well as people – for example, George Gould and Grosvenor Miles opened their shop on Colombo Street in 1854, a sequel to the shop George Gould had opened on Armagh Street in 1851, the first in Christchurch (Lyttelton Times 10/05/1851: 1; 1/07/1854: 3). They were succeeded in 1865 by Sheppard and Co., a partnership between Walter Sheppard (husband of Kate) and George Piercy (Lyttelton Times 12/08/1865: 1; 8/03/1866: 3). This partnership dissolved in 1875 and the shop once again changed its name, this time to George Piercy, Grocer (Press 1/07/1875: 4). Shops branded with the names of their proprietors are unsurprisingly more likely to change as the people do (although not always!). By contrast, London and Paris House had a succession of three proprietors and a change of wares, all under the same name.
A selection of 1850s-1860s artefacts from the stores of Gould and Miles and their successors Sheppard and Co., found on the site of what is now Te Pae. Image: Jessie Garland.
Story names
And then, there are the shops that grow their own names. For example, in 1860, a man named John Younghusband opened a small shop on Colombo Street. It was primarily a stationer’s shop, but he also sold toys and books and hosted a circulating library. The shop was tiny, sandwiched between other, larger buildings. When first advertised, it carried the grandiose name of “John Younghusband’s Fancy Emporium”, which was perhaps too large a name for such a small building (Lyttelton Times 1/12/1860: 7). Within a couple of years, it had instead become “that well-known little shop at 9 Colombo Street” and by 1863, it was indisputably named The Well-Known Little Shop, a truly Dickensian name that was perhaps a little easier for the shop to bear (Press 29/11/1862: 7; Press 23/11/1863: 1). Notably, if we’re thinking about the impression of identity that is performed through shop names, there is quite the difference between Well-Known Little Shop and John Younghusband’s Fancy Emporium. Not necessarily better or worse, but certainly different.
A selection of artefacts from the Well-Known Little Shop. John Younghusband lived on the same section as the shop with his family, so this assemblage is a mixture of discarded stock from the shop and the domestic material culture of their household. Image: Jessie Garland.
I’ve barely scratched the surface here – these are shops and shop names whose stories have been revealed through the archaeological work carried out in the city. There will be many, many more types and trends in the naming of nineteenth century commercial establishments – I haven’t even touched on the bazaars and barely talked about the emporiums. And don’t even get me started on the naming of hotels. Perhaps this is something we can revisit when the database is finished and we can do a more thorough analysis of businesses and the various ways they presented themselves to the consumer.
It is interesting, though, to think about names in the context of commerce and especially in context of consumerism, as we are being sold the goods under the umbrella of the name. There are so many factors that influence our choices as consumers and the performance of retail identity is an inescapable one. We are not immune to marketing and curated experiences, no matter how much we think we are, even when that performance is just in a name. Perhaps it’ll be something you think about as you do your Christmas shopping in the next few weeks – where do these names come from and what are they trying to evoke in us? Are they conjuring a suggestion of a place in the world, of a style of life, of a particular status, or a trustworthy personal connection? What stories do those names tell and how much have we been listening without even realising?
Jessie Garland