Suspicious street name might have been doctored

It looks like a simple spelling error — a street that is supposed to be “Tympani Point.”

But a developer suspects somebody sneaked a “y” on the end, replacing the “i,” and left 15 families living in an entirely different place. Their street name doesn’t evoke the sweet sounds of orchestra music.

Instead, they live on one whose name means “an inflated or distended condition” or “swelling caused by abdominal gas.”

Whether it was an accident or intentional, residents of Tympany

Point in Stetson Hills think it stinks.

“Oh my,” said Judith Bittner, a Tympany Point resident for nearly three years. “Oh dear. I didn’t know it was misspelled. I don’t like that name.”

Bittner and her neighbors thought their short street near Powers and Dublin boulevards in the far northeast corner of the Springs was named for the kettle drums in an orchestra. Surrounding streets follow a symphonic theme: Tympany sits at the end of Woodwind Grove, which connects to Ensemble Heights, which connects to Conductors Point and Chorus Heights.

You get the idea. (See a map of the area and photos at my Side Streets blog on www.gazette.com.)

But along came John Johnson, a bus dispatcher at Falcon School District 49. He stumbled across Tympany while researching bus stops.

“I thought the name was real peculiar,” he said.

So he did what cyber-age people do now when they have a question. He googled it.

“Whoops,” Johnson said, when he read the definition of “tympany” on MSN Encarta, an online encyclopedia.

“According to Encarta, a tympany is an ‘abdominal distension,’” he said. ‘“A swelling of the abdominal wall caused by gas trapped in the intestines.’ It sounds like the windup for a fart. Why would anyone want to live on ‘Fart Street’?”

Bittner certainly doesn’t. She gasped when she learned the meaning and wondered if the spelling could be corrected. It can be changed, said Steve Tuck, a city planner. The city has a form for requesting a name change. And it’s a fairly simple process.

“It would be nice if they’d change it,” Bittner said.

But the question remains how it ever became Tympany.

The Morley Companies developed the neighborhood, Ridgeview at Stetson Hills, in 2002, and one of its principals, Jim Morley, is suspicious about the errant “y.”

Morley said it’s common for his company to come up with a theme for a neighborhood, like the symphonic names used near Bittner, or ski resorts or birds. But the company leaves the actual street names to charity organizations.

As a fundraising tool, Morley said, the company lets the local chapters of the American Heart Association or the American Cancer Society auction rights to pick street names.

Morley said it’s common for the rights to be purchased by doctors. And he thinks they are too smart to goof up the spelling of tympani.

He suspects “Tympany Point” is an inside joke.

“Maybe,” Morley said, “one of the doctors who bought it knew what it meant.”

Tell me about your neighborhood: 636-0193 or bill.vogrin@gazette.com