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A street name or odonym is an identifying name given to a street. The street name usually forms part of the address (though addresses in some parts of the world, notably most of Japan, make no reference to street names). Buildings are often given numbers along the street to further help identify them. Names are often given in a two-part form: an individual name known as the specific, and an indicator of the type of street or area, known as the generic. Examples include "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 streets are given a name without a street type designation. The Mall, for example, is the name of various famous streets around the world. On the other hand, some streets have only a generic name, such as Boulevard. A street name can also include a direction (the cardinal points east, west, north, south, or the quadrants NW, NE, SW, SE) especially in cities with a grid-numbering system. Examples include "E Roosevelt Boulevard" and "14th Street NW". These directions are often (though not always) 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 road in the middle of a shopping area in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. Fore Street is often used, instead of or as well as High Street, in the West of England. The most common street name in the US is "2nd" or "Second". 
Abbey Road in London 
Street sign in Bielsko-Biała, Poland. 
Street sign in Hamburg, Germany Type of commerce or industry 
Smith Street/La Rue des Forges refers to the blacksmiths’ forges that were formerly situated in this street in Guernsey Many streets were named for the type of commerce or industry that was along them. This practice rarely happens in modern times, but many of those named years ago are still common. Examples include London’s Haymarket or Barcelona’s Carrer de Moles, "Millstone Street", where the stonecutters used to have their shops. Lombard Street in London was named after goldsmiths from the Lombardy region of Italy, who were originally associated with the street. As the street developed to become the home of London’s money lenders, the name "Lombard Street" came to be associated with the financial industry. Several cities in the United States, including San Francisco, Baltimore and Philadelphia, have a Lombard Street named after the one in London.
While names such as Long Road or Nine Mile Ride have an obvious meaning, some roads’ names’ etymologies are less clear. The various Stone Streets, for example, were named at a time when the art of building paved (stone) Roman roads had been lost. Even allowing for different standards of notability, though, it is unclear why the main road through Old Windsor was called Straight Road. .jpg)
Orchard Road, Singapore was named for the orchards that formerly lined the road Distinguished or famous individuals 
This street in Rome commemorates Enrico Fermi 
Streets named after U.S. Presidents. 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. 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, California’s North Beach neighborhood were renamed in 1988 after local writers; in 1994, the city broke with tradition, honoring Lawrence Ferlinghetti by renaming an alley after him within his own lifetime. Naming a street for a person is very common in many countries, often in the honoree’s birthplace. However, it is also the most controversial type of naming, especially in cases of renaming. It is often the main reason for renaming:
Conversely, it 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 (see below). Street renaming 
Names are sometimes changed for political purposes. A Belgrade street that began as "Two White Doves" in 1872 was renamed Svetogorska in 1896, Bitoljska in 1922, for Georges Clemenceau in 1930, Svetogorska again in 1943, for Lola Ribar in 1946, and Svetogorska again in 1997. Street names can usually be changed relatively easily by municipal authorities for various reasons. Sometimes streets are renamed to reflect a changing or previously unrecognized ethnic community or to honour politicians or local heroes. A changed political regime can trigger widespread changes in street names – many place names in Zimbabwe changed following independence in 1980, replacing names of British colonists with those of Zimbabwean nationalist leaders. Some international causes célèbres can attract cities around the world to rename streets in solidarity; for example a number of streets with South African embassies were renamed honouring Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment. Street names can also be changed to avoid negative associations. Malbone Street in Brooklyn, New York City, became Empire Boulevard after the deadly Malbone Street Wreck. Cadieux Street in Montreal was renamed De Bullion because the original name was notorious for the former presence of many bordellos. Prohibition brought about heated attempts to change Whiskey Bottom Road in Laurel, Maryland, to a more "dignified" name. During World War I several streets in the German Village area of Columbus, Ohio, were given more "American" sounding names, and Hamburg Avenue in Brooklyn became Wilson Avenue. In Toronto, Hamburg Avenue was renamed to Bristol Avenue in one part and made into an extension of Gladstone Avenue in another. Streets named for Humboldt, Liszt and Schiller were renamed Lynwood, Balmoral and Clarendon, respectively, while Bismark Avenue became Asquith. 
Street name in Dutch and Chinese, Chinatown The Hague
Street name in English and French on Guernsey. 
Street name in French and Catalan, Perpignan Street names also can be affected by a change in official language. After the death of Francisco Franco, the Spanish transition to democracy gave Catalonia the status of an autonomous community, with Catalan as a co-official language. While some street names in Catalonia were changed entirely, most were merely given the Catalan translations of their previous Castilian names; for example, Calle San Pablo (Saint Paul Street) in Barcelona became Carrer Sant Pau. In some cases, this was a reversion to Catalan names from decades earlier. In a similar way, English street names were changed to French in Quebec during the 1970s, after French was declared the sole language for outdoor signage. This was met with hurt and anger by many of the province’s Anglophones, who wished to retain their traditional placenames. The government body responsible for overseeing the enacting of the Charter of the French Language continues to press English-majority communities to further francize their street names (for example, what was once "Lakeshore Road" was changed to "Chemin Lakeshore" in the 1970s, with the Office québécois de la langue française pressuring a further change to "Chemin du Bord-du-Lac"). However, some Indian reserves have their own signage policies, which may exclude French. 
Street name sign adapted to reformed German spelling Sometimes, when communities are consolidated, the streets are renamed according to a uniform system. For example, when the community of Georgetown ceased to have even a nominal existence independent of Washington, D.C., the streets in Georgetown were renamed as an extension of Washington’s street-naming convention. Also, when leaders of Arlington County, Virginia, asked the United States Post Office Department to place the entire county in the "Arlington, Virginia" postal area, the Post Office refused to do so until the county adopted a uniform addressing and street-naming system, which the county did in 1932. In the borough of Queens, New York, a huge street renaming campaign began in the early 20th century, changing almost all of the street names into numbers, in accordance with the adoption of a new unified house numbering scheme. A confusing aspect of this massive transformation was that some of the local subway stations retained their names, instead of them being changed with their corresponding street(s). Often these names either remained intact years later, with rare examples surviving even today. A curious example is that of 23rd Street - Ely Avenue Station; Ely Avenue was renamed 23rd Street long before the subway station was even constructed. Sometimes street renaming can be controversial, because of antipathy toward the new name, the overturning of a respected traditional name, or confusion from the altering of a familiar name useful in navigation. A proposal in 2005 to rename 16th Street, N.W., in Washington, D.C., "Ronald Reagan Boulevard" exemplified all three. Issues of familiarity and confusion can be addressed by the street sign showing the current name and, in smaller writing, the old name. One compromise when the issue is more political can be "co-naming", when the old name is fully retained but the street is also given a second subsidiary name, which may be indicated by a smaller sign underneath the ’main’ name. (See section below on "Multiple names for a single street".) It is also controversial because it is seen by many as a way to rewrite history, even if the original name is not well-liked but nevertheless traditional or convenient. It can be used to erase the presence of a cultural group or previous political regime, whether positive or negative, and to show the supremacy of a new cultural group or political regime. A prime example of this type of name change was the renaming of Montreal’s Dorchester Boulevard, the nexus of the financial and business district, named for governor Lord Dorchester, to René Lévesque Boulevard, after a leader of the Parti Québécois, a separatist party which was responsible for diminishing the rights of anglophones throughout the province (including mandating French-only street names). City officials rushed to the name change, without even waiting the required one-year mourning period after Lévesque’s death. Many Anglophones and federalists were outspoken in their opposition to the name change, and the majority English-speaking city of Westmount retained Dorchester as the name of their portion of the street in protest.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Street |
