WouldBurlington have become the coolest place on earth if it were namedBummerton? Maybenot. So isan unfortunate handle what’s been holding back Rutland?
Thelack of a university and a scenic lake probably accounts more forRutland’s rep than does a name with at least a couple ofnegative connotations. But if a do-over could be arranged, brandingspecialists would surely recommend calling the city, the town and thecounty something other than Land of Rut.
As ananonymous chatter pointed out in an online forum in 2010, the namesuggests “someplace people are stuck in and can’t get out of.Either that, or horned animals having sex in the streets.”
There’salso the Rutles.
FormerMonty Python member Eric Idle created this Beatles parody band forBBC television in the 1970s. He named the group for England’ssmallest county — a landlocked, nondescript placed viewed by hipLondoners as a sad-arse backwater. Yes, the Rutles came from Rutland.
Jokesabout mental depression, badly maintained roads and moose in heat are cracked only by those who “want to see it in a negative way,”objects Mike Coppinger, director of the Downtown Rutland Partnership.”I’ve lived in Rutland all my life, and I’ve never perceived itlike that.”
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I can’t believe that after 40 years of me thinking that Rutland should change its name that there are like thinkers out there! Here’s my story.
In 1979, as a documentary filmmaker who was going back to school to get my master’s degree in communication, my wife, studying wildlife biology at the same school, were able to get funding to do a film on the guanaco of Patagonia in southern Chile. I needed to rent a 16mm film camera and tripod real cheap.
We were living in Washington, DC at the time and through some connections I tracked down this filmmaker living in Vermont who would rent me the gear for six months. I said I’d drive up there to close the deal, and when he told me that it’s just outside of Rutland, I said “what?”
Okay — I’ve heard of ruts in roads — we called them “blutzes” growing up in the Pennsylvania Dutch region — and my biologist wife knew all about animals in rut, and so for the next 40 years, even after moving to live in Vermont in 1989, I still to this day cannot shake a kind of negative gut feeling when I hear the name Rutland.
I’ve visited and had business in Rutland over the years–I like the city–and I’ve never seen any ruts in the roads, nor sex-crazed animals running down the streets, but I can tell you that words do have meanings, and first impressions are oh so important.
History is replete with examples of cities and towns changing their name. Reading, Vermont was changed from Felchville by the US Post Office. Mauch Chunk was changed to Jim Thorpe by the Pennsylvania town’s residents proud of the American Indian who began his Olympic medal winning sports career as a student there. The New Mexico town of Hot Springs changed its name around 1950 to Truth or Consequences, a popular radio quiz show, for who knows what crazy reason.
I was on the board of directors of the Better Bennington Corporation for several years, and I was acutely aware of how a name, a slogan and an built environment influenced not only visitors and potential tourists, but also the attitudes of the townspeople themselves. I also realize how difficult it is to convince born and bred homies that things they grew up with and became accustomed to were just not sending the right message to folks who might choose to spend more time, or even live there and improve the economy and quality of life. There was in the 90’s lots of chain link fencing in downtown Bennington, but the local chain link fencing salesman was a born and bred local guy. We have a camp in Alburgh, and try to convince the local guy who has their gravel and dirt piles right on Main Street, next to the Town Offices that maybe these things should be moved elsewhere as a civic improvement effort.
So my point is made: Okay, Rutland is a nice place, and lots of folks are working to make it an even better place to live, work and go to school. But it might be a good idea to do some market research on the name Rutland and if the research data indicates that “there’s something in a name” and the name Rutland is holding back progress, take it to heart and begin to convince folks that a name change isn’t so bad!