“Norm!”

Watch the video clip below to understand the opening line,  but listen hard, it goes by quickly:

A favorite character from the TV series, “Cheers” was “Norm,” who, as you saw in the clip, was typically greeted in way that underscored a verse from the show’s theme song:

“Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
The troubles are all the same”

The popular series usually took place at “Cheers,” a fictitious bar in Boston, but a real Boston bar inspired “Cheers.” It was the Bull and Finch Pub established in 1969, a real life neighborhood institution in Beacon Hill for 46 years. It was the closest that some of its customers would get to an English pub, what the people who visited the pub called their “local.”  It’s not surprising that British “soaps” are typically centered around the local drinking establishment. The pub is deeply engrained in Britain’s sense of community that the best simile we can think to describe it is that Brits occupy pubs the way Americans go to coffee shops.

Americans visiting British pubs will be charmed by the old buildings in which they’re found. Low ceilings, ancient wooden beams, stone floors, and log fireplaces – usually quite old – make pubs irresistible, at least to us.  The cherry on top, so to speak, are the wondrous names that British pubs go by, and they’re often reflected in the pub’s imaginative sign post. These signs were originally created to attract illiterate tipplers who might not be able to find a sign that reads, “The Greyhound,” but they could find one with a picture of one. In fact, a 1393 law required signs at every pub so the “official Ale Taster” (is that a great job, or what?)  could identify a building as a pub and inspect the alcohol being sold there.

One of these days, we’ll buy the dictionary of pub names, but when it comes to popularity, an analysis of data provided by readers of Britain’s Morning Advertiser in 2017 revealed the top 50 most popular pub names in the UK which you can see here. As far as dog related themes go, the “Fox and Hound,” “Greyhound,” and the “Hare and Hounds” appear in the Top 50,  but as you can see from the images below, Britain’s pubs think “outside the box:”

If you owned a pub, what would you name it?