Did you remember that street name?
- Street names, also known as ‘road names’ or ‘odonyms’, are names that most commonly have two parts, used to identify and classify a street or road.
- Typically, a street name has a unique or ‘specific’ name, such as ‘Clyde’, as well as a classifying or ‘generic’ name, such as ‘Street’.
- Street names may include a direction in the name, such as ‘north’, often used to describe separate parts of the street.
- Commonly, the specific part of street names originates from notable people’s surnames, vegetation, natural items or numbers.
- A single road may receive multiple street names, commonly referring to the same street within two different areas, sections or boundaries.
- Occasionally, highways and main streets are left unnamed, but instead are referred to by a number.
- Common classifications of street names include drives, roads, streets, avenues, lanes, highways, boulevards, courts, crescents, freeways and expressways.
- Street names are typically presented on a sign, known as a ‘street sign’, at the intersections, and the signs may be colour coded, as a further identifier.
- The generic part of a street name generally refers to the size, shape, function, or surrounding geography of the road.
- Sometimes streets are renamed, and this can be for a variety of different reasons, from political to language changes, or a negative association.
Bibliography:
History of Street Names and Street Naming in North America, 2009, Potifos, http://potifos.com/streetname.html
Soniak M, What’s the Difference Between a Street and a Road?, 2012, Mental Floss, http://mentalfloss.com/article/30020/whats-difference-between-street-and-road
Street or Road Name, 2015, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_or_road_name
