Every town has a place people talk about in a certain tone of voice. “You don’t want to live over there.” “That area gone bad.” “Nothing good come out of that road.” Sometimes the reputation was earned, years ago, by a bad season. Sometimes it rests on nothing more than who lives there. Either way, the name sticks. Taxi drivers avoid it. Buyers will not view houses there. Young people from the area leave the address off their job applications.
Names have power over places. Scripture knows this well.
A child named for the worst day
In 1 Samuel 4, Israel suffers a catastrophic defeat. The ark of God is captured by the Philistines, and the priest Eli and his sons die. Eli’s daughter-in-law, heavily pregnant, goes into labour on hearing the news. As she is dying, she names her son Ichabod, saying the glory has departed from Israel (1 Samuel 4:19–22).
It is one of the saddest scenes in the Old Testament, and it would be unkind to judge a grieving, dying mother. But her choice shows how natural it is to name the future by the worst day of the present. She could not see that within a few chapters the ark would be returned (1 Samuel 6). Her son carried a name that described one terrible afternoon.
Many neighbourhoods carry that kind of name.
How labels shape property
A reputation can become self-fulfilling. When people speak about an area as hopeless, those who can afford to leave often do. Owners stop investing in repairs because they doubt they will ever sell. Banks and insurers may become cautious. Businesses stay away. The houses deteriorate, which seems to confirm the name. The people who remain, many of them hardworking families who have been there for decades, find that the label follows them into every interview and every conversation.
None of this means ignoring real problems. Crime, poor drainage, broken street lights and lack of services are genuine issues, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. But there is a difference between describing a problem honestly and naming a whole community by it forever.
A better name
The prophets repeatedly show God renaming places. Through Isaiah He speaks to a land that had been devastated. In the King James wording: “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah” (Isaiah 62:4). Hephzibah means “my delight is in her”; Beulah means “married”. The ruined land receives a name of love and belonging.
Proverbs warns that death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). That applies to what we say about places as much as people. Christians, of all people, should be slow to call any community Ichabod.
Renaming from the inside
Consider a small church on a road with a hard reputation. Its members could have moved their services somewhere more comfortable. Instead they began painting the church wall every year, then helped an elderly neighbour paint her gate, then organised a youth football league on the old lot. Nothing about this made the news. But slowly, people started to say the road was “coming up”. The name began to change because people on the inside acted as if a better one was possible.
For homeowners and residents, renaming a place can look very practical:
- Keeping your own house and verge tidy, even when others do not.
- Joining or starting a residents’ group or neighbourhood watch.
- Speaking about your district with honesty and hope rather than scorn.
- Supporting local businesses and hiring local tradespeople.
- Pressing, politely and persistently, for proper drainage, lighting and roads.
When you are choosing where to live
If you are house-hunting, it is wise to check an area carefully: visit at different times, talk to residents, look at flooding and access to services. That is prudence. But try to form your own judgement rather than accepting a label second-hand. Some of the warmest communities, and some sound purchases, are in places the rumour mill wrote off long ago. And if you do buy there, you become one of the people who get to decide what it will be called next.
The glory has not departed
Ichabod’s mother died believing the glory had gone for good. It had not. God was still at work, even in the Philistines’ temple. The same is true of streets and districts we have written off. Our words can either bury them further or help call them towards a better name. Choose the name you would want your own children to carry.
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