Avla: the level ground of a home
Standard Turkish avlu means a courtyard: an open, unroofed space enclosed by a house or a group of buildings. The Turkish Language Association gives its origin as Greek. The source is αὐλή (aulē), which already meant the open court in front of a house in Ancient Greek and still means a yard in Modern Greek (avlí). Latin borrowed the same word as aula, a hall or court.
In Anatolian village speech the word lives on as avla: the open, level ground around or in front of a house, where the household works, gathers and lives outdoors. In hill country, level ground is rare; where there is an avla, a family can settle and build a home.
For a company that helps families put down roots on both shores of the Aegean, the name carries its own bridge: a Greek word for the yard of a home, kept alive in Anatolian speech.
Sources: Turkish Language Association, Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, entry "avlu" (origin: Greek); Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek lexicon, αὐλή; Anatolian dialect usage.
The weaver: a bird that builds a home
The bird in our logotype is a weaver (family Ploceidae). In many weaver species the male builds the nest alone, weaving strips of grass and leaf fibre into a closed chamber, in several species tying knots and stitches as he goes. The female inspects it, and if the work is not good enough she refuses it, and he builds again.
The finished nest is a woven room with a small entrance that often faces downward, a shape that keeps out rain, snakes and other climbing predators.
Some weavers build together. The sociable weaver of southern Africa makes the largest communal nests of any bird: one roof shelters many chambers and hundreds of birds, stays insulated through desert heat and cold, and is repaired and passed on for decades, across generations.
Sources: ornithological references on the weaver family (Ploceidae) and field studies of the sociable weaver, Philetairus socius.
