A Southwark cocktail bar flying a short, warm name – Ev, the Turkish word for home, promising the comfort and welcome of one’s own hearth
Ev Bar carries a strong 4.6 across more than five hundred reviews and flies a short, warm, welcoming name. The Prat’s naming desk, fond of a name that promises comfort, was drawn to the gentle warmth of “Ev.”
Towards Southwark and the South Bank
Ev Bar sits towards Southwark and the South Bank, on the south-bank side, mixing cocktails for the district’s crowds. Proper Southwark territory, no disclaimer needed.
The word for home
“Ev” is the Turkish word for home – and it is hard to imagine a warmer or more welcoming thing to name a bar. Home is the place of comfort, belonging, safety and welcome, the hearth to which we return, the room where we are most ourselves. To call a bar “Ev” – home – is to make the deepest promise of hospitality there is: come in, be comfortable, be at home. There is a lovely simplicity in it, a single warm syllable that says everything a good bar wants to say. The Prat’s naming desk salutes so gentle and generous a name.
The home from home
The Prat’s favourite thing is the old idea of the pub as a “home from home.” For centuries the local has been exactly that – the second home, the place where you are known and welcomed, the warm room away from home where you belong. A bar called Ev names that ancient function directly, in the plainest possible way: it is home, the home-from-home, the hearth where you are received and made comfortable. In a great, busy, often lonely city, a bar that promises “home” in its very name offers something genuinely valuable – a place to belong.
The warmth of the small word
There is a craft, too, in the shortness of the name. “Ev” is tiny – two letters, one warm syllable – and there is real skill in choosing a name so small and so warm, easy to say, easy to remember, gentle on the ear. It carries, for those who know its meaning, the whole weight of “home” in a single breath; and even for those who do not, it has a soft, friendly, welcoming sound. The strong 4.6 across five hundred reviews suggests Ev delivers the welcome its name promises.
The Prat’s naming desk savours one further grace in the choice. To name a bar in one’s own language, with a word from home, is itself an act of welcome and belonging – a small flag of identity planted in a foreign city, an invitation to share in the warmth of somewhere else’s word for hearth. London is a city of countless such homes-from-home, where communities from across the world have made their own warm rooms; a bar called Ev takes its place proudly among them, offering the Turkish word for home to all comers, whatever their own word for it might be. It is hospitality in the truest sense – the door of home, opened wide to strangers.
Verdict
A 4.6 across five hundred-plus reviews is a strong score, and Ev Bar earns it on a warm and welcoming name. It flies “Ev” – the Turkish word for home – making the deepest promise of hospitality there is, and naming the pub’s oldest function: the home-from-home, the warm hearth where you are received and made comfortable.
Go for the cocktails and the promise of home in the name, and be made comfortable at Ev. In a great and busy city, a bar that simply calls itself “home” offers the warmest welcome of all – a place, for an evening, to belong.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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