Little did I know that I traveled through the Tannery Bend District on the fateful visit that brought me to Napa.

The district, whether it truly exists yet or not, is now marked by a lovely brick wall and sign outside the recently opened pharmacy at Coombs Street and Imola Avenue.

It was still an unnamed wilderness in 2003, when I motored through it to downtown Napa’s first “lifestyle” hotel, the Travelodge, to find my wife. She had set out from Washington, D.C., to Napa a few days before I did for a job interview and rendezvous with friends.

While Tannery Bend has long been Tannery Bend, it became a district only recently.

It seems the city is expecting that a private investor’s recent purchase of the old tannery sites, a long-awaited makeover of the Riverpark Shopping Center and the eventual completion of the Napa River flood project will give the area additional zip.

Similarly, it was just recently that we gained an Oxbow District where once there was just an Oxbow.

Residents of bigger, faster-paced cities have invented snappy names for neighborhoods where the character is changing. SoHo is short for “south of Houston” in New York and London, and for “south of Hollywood Road“ in Hong Kong. SoMa is short for “south of Market Street” in San Francisco. Lovely Nolita — north of Little Italy — is a newish one in Manhattan.

In the newsroom the other day, the conversation turned to potentially snappy names for Napa neighborhoods.

I asked Kevin Courtney where he lives. Courtney, who has sat at the same desk for more than 30 years and famously drives his cars until the manufacturers no longer carry replacement parts for them, said, boringly, “Browns Valley.”

Kevin’s newsroom neighbor, L. Pierce Carson — urbane, worldly, attuned to the shifting cultural currents — quickly got with the program.

“BraVo,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. Technically, Browns Valley might have to be BroVa. But Pierce is on the right track, and BraVo has the better ring to it.

Our home neighborhood, west of the highway but not technically Westwood, near the tree streets but not in old town, has no name I know of and few possibilities.

Premo? (The Napa Premium Outlets are close by.) Soweto, for south of Westwood?

No and no.

Other parts of town can more easily adapt. MoPa (Monticello Park), WhyMo (the western stretch of Imola, near Snow Elementary); Emo for the eastern part of Imola across from the Napa State Hospital grounds; UpLo for Upper Laurel, NoTra for north of Trancas, and, of course, around Terrace Drive and Shurtleff Avenue, the Tee Shurt District.