Having spent years developing advertising campaigns for various properties all over this little slice of paradise, I can tell you that the one part of the job I absolutely hated was when we were asked to come up with a name for a
condo.
Let me tell you, just about every feckin' name you can think of has been used - often many times over but spelt differently - hence the infatuation with adding a lower case d' to bloody everything.
In some cases, you can tell the age - and even the developer - of the condo by its name. "Park" was used a lot by Far East Organization in the 80's. Hence Clementi Park, Bayshore Park etc.
In the early 2000's URA issued a new rule stopping developers from calling their concrete creations parks unless the actually happened to be sited on a park.
In the late 90's and early 2000's, there was an infuation with foreign sounding names - Costa Del Sol, Cote D'Azure. This was followed by taking any name and adding a D prefix to it to make it sound exotic. (As mentioned, this approach has experienced a resurgence over the last year or so.)
Around 2005, one syllable minimalist names became very popular - The Arte, The Clift etc.
The usual rule of thumb when developing a name is to a) make sure that the name has not been used before by checking Street Directory.com and b) ensure that name can pass the 'taxi driver' test - as in the bugger will be able to pronounce it and eventually recognize it.
Funnily enough, Far East Organization's CEO, Phillip Ng (who, with his brother are together Singapore's richest men) takes a personal interest in the names of his
condos and often comes up with the name himself. I'm pretty sure The Clift is one of his creations.
I'm fairly sure that Posh Grove East (which actually looks pretty nice as a condo) was named by its developer.
"Both politicians and nappies need to be changed regularly, and for the same reasons."
