Quote of the day: Brokers play their own "name the nabe" games

The shorthand for the “iron triangle” of Willets Point in Queens – iTri – seems destined to go the way of the Mets’ postseason hopes.

BoCoCa, an amalgamation of three old-school Brooklyn neighborhoods – Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill – never caught fire.

GoCaGa for Gowanus and Carroll Gardens invited ridicule. So did SunSlope, a name invented by a broker trying to sell condos in Greenwood Heights, which some consider a fancier name for Sunset Park.

The force behind the rebranding is the real estate industry. Brokers are known for pushing boundaries: Park Slope must be twice as big as it was 30 years ago, and newcomers to Bushwick are told they’re buying in East Williamsburg.

Sometimes they go even further by renaming a community – Clinton for Hell’s Kitchen – or creating one out of whole cloth.

“These names are great selling points for agents trying to bring clients into a neighborhood that wasn’t so hip before but sounds a lot hipper now,” said Jean Charles, a senior agent at Bond New York, a major sales and rental firm.

They’re not the only culprits. Bloggers can create a groundswell for a name change, too. The Web site Curbed.com decreed that the unnamed swath east of Fifth Ave. between 23rd and 34th Sts. should be called Gramurray.

– From the New York Daily News. What’s your favorite new name for an old Chicago neighborhood, and which areas are ripe for rebranding?

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