h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

there are names?

we had some colours maybe, in primary school and only four

red, yellow, blue and green

I throw in a purple to make it up

Marvin, Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian.

PP.

You could use the members of "The Monkeys", but you'ld have to miss one out........

Williams, Owen, Donald, Barlow and Orange.

Has the benefit of having a built-in colour.

PP.

At my school the houses were called, Domus, Oppidum, and Rus. We had a school song which lauded them, and each house name was roared out at full volume by each of the houses and at the end of the verse, tradition demanded that you turned and punched the nearest non member of your house.

This mindless violence was smiled upon by the staff in the good old tradition of English public schools, like racism, bullying, class hatred, and buggery; character building they called it.

Until my last year when the new Headmaster, himself a solid dyed in the wool ex pupil, turned and kicked the Classics master in the sapit generosum scriptor, we laughed until we cried. The classics master just cried. He was a miserable git.

Or the list suggested by The Stranglers:

Leon Trotsky, Elmyr de Hory, Lenny Bruce, Sancho Panza and Shakespeare

Ian Dury offered Noel Coward, Van Gough, Einstein and Segovia. And they weren't have clever b******s.

PP.

have = half!

Doh.

PP.

Nowadays it would be something like:

Wonga.Com House
Monsanto House
Halliburton House
Betfair.Com House
Royal Bank of Scotland House

Naah

In the interests of modern capitalism they should be
Bannantyne
Meaden
Jones
Paphitis
Caan

(that may be out of date - not sure of the current names )

There's that one that looks like cruella de vile and sounds like Bernard manning.....

Amazon would meet both the inspiring women criteria as well as attracting sponsorship.
Mercedes is another girls name with potential for money garnering
Street-porter, just cos she's on telly right now and I think it'd be a great house name (house? Street? Oh never mind)
Apple. After the Coldplay baby of course.
And you'd have to have a Doctor House.

Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy

Goo
Alabaster
Plain
Ripley
and, and...
Brunel

I like Bea's list best so far...

at my school we had Speedwell, Seabrake, Discovery and Maryflower which were the names of the ships owned by our founder (slave trading git). they were represented by colours as follows: royal blue, pea green, baby-poo yellow and powder blue. We had to wear house polo-neck pullovers made out of nylon every evening after school so as not to get our lovely uniforms grubby. Which were made of red cloth which is what made the aforementioned slave trading git founder rich in the first place.

I offer
John, Paul, George, Ringo and Stuart
:D

Our school was so small we only had three houses. They were named after a nearby building, the street the school was in and (slightly more stylish) the old building that the school had previously been housed in.

Giving us
School House - (Well, we didn't think it was odd at the time.) These were the snooty crowd in blue.
Exeter House - brash and brilliant
Foley House - this lot were a bit meh, really. Like the Lib Dems, sort of.

Families were always put in the same house. Is that tradition?

All our sets of sisters were put in the same houses.

Our buildings all had mad names too. There was Main building, Denmark house (original location of school: Denmark street), Witsun house (founder's name) and the 300 building. Named because it was built for the school's 300th anniversary. There was also a rather large house (as in ex residential house bought for the school) where the first years slept called Burnett house. But I never found out why.

"the 300 building" ...

It didn't have men in mini skirts kicking people into wells and shouting "this is Sparta"?
No?
Pity.

if there had and they had all looked like Gerard Butler I may have been more keen on going to my French lessons...

Smith, Patel, Joans, and murphy...

our houses at school were, rivers (local ones), err Deban, Yare, Orwell, and... err can't remember the other one (waveney?) and at high school we had plannets; Neptune, Satan, err satturn I mean, Jupiter and... can't remember the last one... I don't think it was Uranus... pluto... na...

At primary school.... we had Shafsburry, and... err... nope that's the only one I can recall I think