Thread: Weekly Poll: How did you come up with a name for your homeschool?

Our homeschool name is "Ergon Academy". I'm told that Ergon basically means "Love Through Service" in Greek. If it doesn't, please don't spoil it for me, cause we've had the name for eleven years now and it has kind of stuck. Our state requires that your homeschool have an official name, and when I was trying to come up with one, I just tried to focus on the overriding philosophy I wanted for our homeschool.

This is only one of a million ways to come up with a name for your homeschool, if you even have one. I know we already have a thread about homeschool names, but I thought it might be fun to do some "statistical analysis" on it as well!

Ours is named after the street on which we live, and because I like the sound of it-Grandview Home Learning Academy. But it's open for review, if the kids want to change it.

We, sonny and I, originally wanted St. Lucifer's Academy (sonny and I are freethinkers) but dad (a devout catholic) nixed that idea. I wanted something that was honoring secular reasoning and nothing related to gawd or jebus (or anything divine). In the final three was Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and good ole' Ben. Hubby nix Paine knowing he was an atheist, said no to Jefferson (his medical was Jefferson and daughter's law school choice is Jefferson) because it sounds like a repeat, BF was a good fit also because hubby is from Phillie. So it's to be Benjamin Franklin something.... Here we bounced lots of ideas, school, academy, house, hall, garden, center, learning, arts, preparatory, tutorial, homeschool, ugh! We finally settled on Benjamin Franklin Preparatory Academy or Ben Prep for short (but sonny and I still joke that we are St. Lucifer's ). We even have an offical website! http://benprep.webs.com/

We named our school because we figured it would be fun. No real reason, we didn't have to, just figured it would be fun.
One day, we were reading the Dictionary of Superstitions and that was when the kids decided on Valeria Iona. We tossed Academy at the end (it was almost Preparatory Academy, but we didn't like the sound of that, so dropped Preparatory) because Academy just seemed to fit. I think the name fits us quite us well & we intend to keep it throughout our homeschooling journey.

The kids picked our mascot while reading the Encyclopedia of Mythololgical Creatures.

We're slightly strange, what can I say?

We don't have a name. If we ever had to we'd probably just use our last name, but otherwise I would never think of it. I had no idea that people named their homeschools! Out of curiosity, what purpose does it serve?

Ours is "Thomas Jefferson Homeschool Academy" since our principal (AKA hubby) is a huge TJ fan. But we don't follow a TJ education philosophy. I usually only use the name when filling out orders and such.

Originally Posted by hockeymom

We don't have a name. If we ever had to we'd probably just use our last name, but otherwise I would never think of it. I had no idea that people named their homeschools! Out of curiosity, what purpose does it serve?

I didn't mean "why be creative", but I meant to ask about why certain states might require one. Sorry if it sounded rude!

First, you were not in the least rude, Hockeymom, so relax. You had a good question! Beyond the states where names are mandatory, a lot of us just name our homeschool because it is fun to do so, or so we will look more official when filling out forms, etc.
We call our school the Dragonfly School, named after the Japanese martial arts family that adopted my significant other when he was younger. Their family symbol is the dragonfly, so we have taken that as well for our non-martial school. It was that or The Supercilious Retards. (Not really! )

I was going to say "incorporated our names" which is true, but might not have been clear. We translated our last name into English, and named our school High Bridge Academy.

In CA, independent homeschoolers are considered private schools, and we are required to name them. It's probably the hardest part about CA homeschool paperwork.

We named ours Firefly Academy (after Joss Whedon's brilliant TV show. Yes, we're geeks). We only use it on our student/teacher ID cards (through homeschool buyers co-op) and on the various forms for educational freebies and such that require a school name.