When I said "There's a place near my house whose name is similar to your name"(the name of the place was Cleveland and my friend's last name was the same), my American friends said you can't say "whose" to refer to things. However, it is grammatically Ok to use whose to things according to my English grammar book. Even more, she said I should say something like there's a place that's name is similar to my name. I doubted if it was right, so I asked another American friend of mine, and she also said it is more natural to use that instead of whose when mentioning things. Is it a newly coined grammar or something? I'm very confused. Is it used only in everyday conversation?