A lot can be wrapped up in a name.

Call a color puke green and see how many people opt to paint their walls with it. But, at the same time, names aren't everything.

Take the example of finding a dream home on a street with an ill-fated name. Though the name of the street may invoke cringing or snickers, it probably isn't enough to keep you from buying that home.

There's plenty of water-cooler discussion over whether someone would buy or live on a street with a particularly obnoxious name. On the flip side, people have a tendency to praise street names that sound pleasant.

There may be a gut tug one way or the other when looking at a home on Diablo Way, Feral Avenue or Dawn Meadow or Painted Sky streets. But it doesn't seem that it often, if ever, becomes a deal-breaker.

"If any street names ever impacted a client's decision to purchase, I can't think of one instance other than a laugh here or there about a name or two," said Glen Scalise with Century 21 Rolling Oaks.

Joe Virnig of Remax Gold Coast Realty wondered aloud if there were any Democrats living on Reagan Street.

"I can't say after 20 years I've ever seen anybody turned off by a street name," he said. He did, however, recall someone who liked the lucky number in an address and bought the house.

The topic has been researched, albeit not much. A small study out of Canada found homes with the name of a prestigious street worked into their name sold better than homes on nearby streets without the name.

Then there's Steve Crossland, who works in real estate with his wife, Sylvia, in Austin, Texas.

Crossland recalls building a home in a new development on a street called Sisquoc. Other buyers along the street complained that it was hard to pronounce and spell, so the developer changed it to San Lucas.

"That got me to thinking," Crossland said.

In particular, he started thinking about a local neighborhood with street names like Gunfight and Shootout. He took a look about a year ago at whether homes on those streets cost any less or took any longer to sell.

No major difference

What he found was inconclusive. He revisited it again this year and didn't find a significant difference in price, though the "non-politically correct" streets, as he called them, did take a fraction longer to sell.

That holds up in his own experience.

"I've never had somebody say, I don't want to see this house, because I don't like the street name,'" he said.

Still, there's that sense that maybe, just maybe, it does make a difference.

"Probably there's somewhat of a low level, maybe subconscious, gut reaction," Crossland said. "I have to think there's some people who might be affected by it."

The effects of that gut reaction become more pronounced once you get inside the house and start picking out furniture, curtains and wall paint. There's a reason companies invest so much in selecting names for their products.

The influence of a name goes beyond buying that name brand dresser or shampoo, though.

Jeanine Skorinko, who will be an assistant professor at Worchester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts this fall, did a study as a psychology student on how people perceive colors based on the names.

Paying premium for 'mocha'

"I never thought my color study would actually work," she said.

The research took the same color and named one brown and the other mocha. People were willing to pay more for mocha.

Skorinko said people think there must be something a little bit nicer about the mocha than the brown.

"I don't know that we're necessarily aware of this," she said.

She noted how the cosmetics industry plays to the perception of color names.

"You don't have red, you don't have pink lipstick," she said. "You have precious pink, moonlight glow."

In the home, it adds to the interest of showing off the house to be able to say the walls are painted "quiet kiwi" as opposed to green, she said.

Whatever the color is called, it can be one of those cues that buyers don't even realize they're picking up on when they look at a house. What real estate agents tell selling clients about a fresh coat of paint and a manicured lawn has held up in studies.

A study Skorinko did with her statistics students looked at house marketing, pitting homes with grass lawns against those with trees. People were more drawn to the homes with trees.

People think they are basing their decisions on rational, concrete things, but other environmental factors can make a difference, Skorinko said.

"We don't think we're paying attention to how many trees are on a property or what the name of a color is," she said. "In the end, it's these little things that may be swaying our decision."