Street name


A street name is an identifying name given to a street or road. In toponymic terminology, names of streets and roads are referred to as odonyms or hodonyms. The street name usually forms part of the address. Buildings are often given numbers along the street to further help identify them. Odonymy is the study of road names.
Names are often given in a two-part form: an individual name known as the specific, and an indicator of the type of street, known as the generic. Examples are "Main Road", "Fleet Street" and "Park Avenue". The type of street stated, however, can sometimes be misleading: a street named "Park Avenue" need not have the characteristics of an avenue in the generic sense. Some street names have only one element, such as "The Beeches" or "Boulevard". In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common when writing a two-part street name to link the two parts with a hyphen and not capitalise the generic. This practice has now died out.
A street name can also include a direction especially in cities with a grid-numbering system. Examples include "E Roosevelt Boulevard" and "14th Street NW". These directions are often used to differentiate two sections of a street. Other qualifiers may be used for that purpose as well. Examples: upper/lower, old/new, or adding "extension".
"Main Street" and "High Street" are common names for the major street in the middle of a shopping area in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. The most common street name in the US is "2nd" or "Second".

Etymologies

Streets are normally named, and properties on them numbered, by decision of the local authority, which may adopt a detailed policy. For instance the city of Leeds, UK, provides that:
  • property developers should consult with councillors, historic groups, etc. Names should relate to the history of the area or reflect the local landscape and population;
  • no living person's names can be used, and the consent of the family is required to use those of the recently deceased;
  • no initial 'the', numbers, punctuation or abbreviations are allowed, except St for Saint;
  • no name may be changed without the consent of all affected property owners;
  • properties shall be numbered from the start of a street, with odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right;
  • individual doors must have their own numbers; for sub-divisions with a shared entrance, flats should always be numbered or lettered but should not be described or suffixed. Flat numbers should start at the main entrance of each floor and go clockwise;
  • 'alias names' or 'Vanity Addresses' can be approved along with the number, but these must not be business names;
  • the Royal Mail will only register properties which have their own secure letterbox.
The etymology of a street name is sometimes very obvious, but at other times it might be obscure or even forgotten.
In the United States, most streets are named after numbers, landscapes, trees, or the surname of an important individual.
Some streets, such as Elm Street in East Machias, Maine, have been renamed due to features changing. Elm Street's new name, Jacksonville Road, was chosen because it leads to the village of Jacksonville. Its former name was chosen because of elm trees; it was renamed when all of the trees along the street succumbed to Dutch elm disease.
The Shambles, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term fleshammels, is a historical street name which still exists in various cities and towns around England. The best-known example is in York.
The unusual etymologies of quite a few street names in the United Kingdom are documented in Rude Britain, complete with photographs of local signage.

Type of commerce or industry

In the past, many streets were named for the type of commerce or industry found there. This rarely happens in modern times, but many such older names are still common. Examples are London's Haymarket; Barcelona's Carrer de Moles, where the stonecutters used to have their shops; and Cannery Row in Monterey, California.

Landmarks

Some streets are named for landmarks that were in the street, or nearby, when it was built. Such names are often retained after the landmark disappears.
Barcelona's La Rambla is officially a series of streets. The Rambla de Canaletes is named after a fountain that still stands, but the Rambla dels Estudis is named after the Estudis Generals, a university building demolished in 1843, and the Rambla de Sant Josep, the Rambla dels Caputxins, and the Rambla de Santa Monica are each named after former convents. Only the convent of Santa Monica survives as a building, and it has been converted to a museum.
London's Crystal Palace Parade takes its name from a former exhibition centre that stood adjacent to it, destroyed by fire in 1936.
Image:Orchard Road street sign - Singapore.jpg|thumb|Orchard Road, Singapore, was named for the orchards that formerly lined the road
Sometimes a street is named after a landmark that was destroyed to build that very street. For example, New York's Canal Street takes its name from a canal that was filled in to build it. New Orleans' Canal Street was named for the canal that was to be built in its right-of-way.

Self-descriptive names

While names such as Long Road or Nine Mile Ride have an obvious meaning, some road names' etymologies are less clear. The various Stone Streets, for example, were named at a time when the art of building paved Roman roads had been lost. The main road through Old Windsor, UK, is called "Straight Road", and it is straight where it carries that name. Many streets with regular nouns rather than proper nouns, are somehow related to that noun. For example, Station Street or Station Road, do connect to a railway station, and many "Railway Streets" or similar do end at, cross or parallel a railway.

Destination

Many roads are given the name of the place to which they lead, while others bear the names of distant, seemingly unrelated cities.
As a road approaches its stated destination, its name may be changed. Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield, Connecticut, becomes Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, for example. A road can switch names multiple times as local opinion changes regarding its destination: for example, the road between Oxford and Banbury changes name five times from the Banbury Road to the Oxford Road and back again as it passes through villages.
Some streets are named after the areas that the street connects. For example, Clarcona Ocoee Road links the communities of Clarcona and Ocoee in Orlando, Florida, and Jindivick–Neerim South Road links the towns of Jindivick and Neerim South in Victoria, Australia.
Some roads are named after their general direction, such as "Great North Road".
Bypasses are often named after the town they route traffic around, for example the Newbury bypass.

Distinguished or famous individuals

Some streets are named after famous or distinguished individuals, sometimes people directly associated with the street, usually after their deaths. Bucharest's Şoseaua Kiseleff was named after the Russian reformer Pavel Kiselyov who had the road built while Russian troops were occupying the city in the 1830s; its Strada Dr. Iuliu Barasch is named after a locally famous physician whose clinic was located there. Many streets named after saints are named because they lead to, or are adjacent to, churches dedicated to them.
Naming a street after oneself as a bid for immortality has a long pedigree: Jermyn Street in London was named by Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans, who developed the St. James's area for Charles II of England. Perhaps to dissuade such posterity-seeking, many jurisdictions only allow naming for persons after their death, occasionally with a waiting period of ten years or more. A dozen streets in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood were renamed in 1988 after deceased local writers; in 1994, the city broke with tradition, honoring Lawrence Ferlinghetti by renaming an alley after the poet within his own lifetime.
Naming a street for a person is very common in many countries, often in the honorand's birthplace. However, it is also the most controversial type of naming, especially in cases of renaming. Two main reasons streets are renamed are: to commemorate a person who lived or worked in that area ; or to associate a prominent street in a city after an admired major historical figure even with no specific connection to the locale. Similarly, hundreds of roads in the United States were named with variations of Martin Luther King Jr., in the years after his 1968 assassination.
Conversely, renaming can be a way to eliminate a name that proves too controversial. For example, Hamburg Avenue in Brooklyn, New York became Wilson Avenue after the United States entered World War I against Germany. In Riverside, California, a short, one-way street named Wong Way was renamed to a more respectful Wong Street, as well as spelled out in Chinese characters to honor the historical Chinatown that once occupied the area.
In a case of a street named after a living person becoming controversial, Lech Wałęsa Street in San Francisco was renamed to Dr. Tom Waddell Place in 2014 after Wałęsa made a public remark against gay people holding major public office.
File:CorkyLeeHalfwayVlcsnap-2023-10-22-21h17m14s410.png|thumb|Corky Lee Way is unveiled in New York City in 2023 at the corner of Mott Street and Mosco Street

Lettered and numbered streets

There are public benefits to having easily understood systems of orderly street names, such as in sequences:
  • A Street, B Street, C Street, and so on, ending with Z Street.
  • *Cities using the full sequence from A Street to Z Street include Dallas, Texas and others. Sacramento, California's system goes only up to Y Street.
  • *The system of lettered street-naming for Washington, D.C. notably includes lettered streets with exceptions that there is no "J Street" and no "X" "Y" or "Z" streets. The omission of J street was due to lack of distinction between I and J in writing practices at the time.
  • Avenue A, Avenue B, Avenue C, etc.
  • *In Brooklyn, there are streets with letter names, or places where such streets would be: List of lettered Brooklyn avenues.
  • *The Antelope Valley has a similar system, but with streets in between taking the name of the first avenue to their north, and suffixed with a number for how many sixteenths of a mile south they are. For example, Avenue J-8 is 8/16 mile south of Avenue J.
  • Ash St., Bash St., Cash St., Dash St., etc.
  • Asher St., Basher St., Casher St., Dasher St., etc.
  • Asherly, Bemington, Cashburton, Deskowton, etc..
A 1950 American Planning Association report supports use of these systems.