As far as the rest of the world is concerned, I live in a town with two names. That is, the town has two names, not me. Don’t you think sometimes our language can be deceiving? I mean, if boned chicken is chicken without the bones, then why isn’t canned tuna, tuna without the can? But I digress.

The Boston Globe says I live in Vineyard Haven. The New York Times says I live in Tisbury. Or is it vice versa? I tell them Vineyard Haven is basically a community or village within Tisbury, but that falls on deaf ears. Billing departments only care about zip codes anyway. Then again, both papers make it to my house every morning.

But for those Johnny-Come-Sometimes (which I used to be), the confusion persists, with good reason. Just look around the town. The road signs tell you that you are entering Tisbury. Yet, the town has the Vineyard Haven Post Office, the Vineyard Haven Library, the Vineyard Haven Marina and the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club. And yet again, there’s also the Tisbury Town Hall, Tisbury police and fire departments, Tisbury Public Works and the Tisbury School.

A town hall clerk put me straight. “Tisbury is the legal name,” she said. “You mean the post office is illegal?” I countered. “Don’t get me started,” she replied, showing me the door. Perhaps if Tisbury is the legal name, then Vineyard Haven is the maiden name.

When we moved here in the spring of 2011, we registered our cars as Island cars. At the Registry of Motor Vehicles, I turned in my forms to a clerk who then asked me what town name would I like on my registration. “I have a choice?,” I asked. “Pick one,” she snapped cordially. “What town do you want to say you live in?” A puzzled me responded, “What do you mean?” She looked bemused. “Tisbury or Vineyard Haven?”

“Is this some kind of test for newcomers?” I furrowed a brow. “You can say that.” She unfurrowed hers. “What do I get if I pick the ‘right one’?” I asked. “A big smile,” she said, practicing one. I thought for a moment and said Tisbury, trying to act legal. Slowly her lips creased upwards. Lights flashed. Fireworks went off. I won some kind of respect and left the RMV with my new registration form, my new license and my head held high.

When I examined my new registration, I noticed it says that my residential address is Tisbury but my mailing address is Vineyard Haven. I guess that’s because that’s where the post office is.

If Vineyard Haven is a community or village, then why does it seem so spread out, at least in its usage? Are there actual boundaries? Or has it all been gerrymandered to personal taste? The Vineyard Haven Library is just nine blocks from the Tisbury School, about six blocks from the Tisbury town hall and about eight blocks from the Vineyard Haven Post Office. Some people over on Lambert’s Cove Road are listed as being in Vineyard Haven. I don’t get it.

Speaking of the library, I figured that’s where I could find enlightenment. One of the things I really love about becoming a year-rounder is I now live around the corner from the town library. It’s like having a guest house with a staff. A place with an extra brain, extra heat or extra air conditioning. I know we now live with information literally at our fingertips, but going to the library is exercising while researching. There’s also the environment — and I am an admitted ambience chaser. There’s the quiet, the like-mindedness of inhabitants, the shelves alive with ideas, the fragrance of a well-thumbed past.

Wait! I hear a haiku in the stacks.

In the library

Words awaken dreams within

Teaching in silence

Libraries were popular and protected back before “friend” was a verb. Unfortunately across the country, libraries are falling to budgetary axes and the promise of no new taxes. We’ve been lucky on this Island.

The Vineyard Haven Library is part of the CLAMS network, a nonprofit, cooperative association of libraries on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. CLAMS stands for Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing. Libraries Organized to Better Serve Talkers, Educators, Researchers & Students (LOBSTERS) must be in use somewhere else.

So what I found at my library was that the first English settlement on the Island was established in 1642 by Thomas Mayhew, who, of course, was born in Tisbury, England. I learned that Tisbury, Massachusetts, “incorporates” Vineyard Haven, which did not achieve that official name until 1871. Before that the Wampanoags called it Nobnocket. Later it was Homses Hole, Homes Hole and Holmes Hole, that last one being more English than Native American.

The librarian concurred with the town hall clerk: Tisbury is our legal name. But for good measure, she then added, “Both names are now used interchangeably. In fact, I’ve heard the whole town called Vineyard Haven.”

I decided to stop this fret over the town’s name. After all, when it comes to names, there are more intriguing fish to fry. We now live in a strange age of eponymous irony with the likes of actual people named Bernie Madoff, Anthony Weiner and Rielle Hunter. Don’t they all sound like rogues from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show?

Time to go off to that other “library”, just a short walk by the Vineyard Haven Post Office to the curious book shelves at the Thrift Shop over in Chicken Alley. Now there’s a good name!

Arnie Reisman and his wife, Paula Lyons, regularly appear on the weekly NPR comedy quiz show, Says You! He also writes for the Huffington Post.