A good bookstore is hard to title.

A century ago, when naming a bookstore, you slapped the owner’s name on the front awning and called it a day. See: Misters William Barnes and Gilbert Clifford Noble when they hooked up in 1917. But today, most bookstore names are cuter, flashier, and funnier than “Boss #1 and Boss #2 Books” — because they have to be. “Smith and Jones Booksellers” just says, “We hold the lease on this establishment which contains books.” A name like “Read Handed” or “Buy the Book” says, “We got books and they live in a fun place tended to by fun people. Perhaps you’d like visiting more than book shopping via your phone between putting on your left and right shoes?”

Great bookstore names can be sassy, cute, inscrutable, or groan-inducing. When they work, they remind us of the creativity and moxie that makes us love bookstores a whole crazy lot. Below are 11 of our favorites.

Libros Schmibros Lending Library & Bookshop (Los Angeles)

Via librosschmibros.wordpress.com

Started by former book critic David Kipen from his personal library, Libros Schmibros pays tribute to its Boyle Heights neighborhood’s former Jewish and now Mexican-American population. The Spanish libros means “books”; Schmibros is the nonsense name of the store’s imaginary founders, Jewish paper peddlers named “The Schmee Brothers.”

Via librosschmibros.wordpress.com