Street Names. There's no Donut Drive, Roast Beef Boulevard, or Celery Street in Grimsby. Why is that? Look further afield and you can find Frying Pan Road in Virginia, Roast Meat Hill Road in Connecticut. And there is a Chicken Dinner Road in Idaho, Puddin' Ridge Road in North Carolina, and Chicken Gristle Road in Texas.
What are the conventions for street names? There are lots of conventions for streets - both the names and the extensions/suffixes such as road, avenue, drive, and so on.
This comes from a U.K. site: "Street names should not be difficult to pronounce or awkward to spell. In general, words of more than three syllables should be avoided as should multiple words."
That's good sense, but the choosing of a name? This goes down a long road of conventions of all sorts.
There are types of commerce: Cannery Row if you've been to Monterey. Elm Street - a name for the trees on the street. There are landmarks on the street - in New York Canal Street was named after the canal that was filled in to build it.
We like famous and important people here in Ontario - Queen Street, King Street, Victoria Street. We like the province in the street - Ontario Streets are everywhere in Ontario towns. And then we like first names that are simple: Albert, Mary, John - simple street names. Or maybe the names of British historical figures and monarchs.
I remember in Toronto there was an area named after the Greek alphabet - alpha, beta, delta, and so on streets. One can often find streets with number names - Fourth Avenue, Third Street.
Streets do get renamed. Usually there is a political motivation. We have our own story in Montreal - this comes from Wikipedia:
It is seen 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 French-language reformist premier of Quebec. City officials rushed the name change, without waiting the required one-year mourning period after Lévesque's death. Many Anglophones 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.
Streets seem to have their own life and history. Some of the weirdest names? This, That and The Other Street in Nova Scotia, Ha-Ha Road in London, Mad Dog Lane, Yorkshire, Boring, Oregon and a lot of scatological names - Yellowsnow Road in Fairbanks, Alaska. For those who believe, there is Elvis Alive Drive in Las Vegas. That's fun.
Isn't this a wonderful picture of the Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake. What's the main street named? Queen Street.
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