You know, I had a moment this morning while I
was waiting for the light to change. I was just
scaring up at that green metal rectangle on the
corner, reading the name. It's something I've
probably looked at a thousand times, typed into
my GPS, written on envelopes, but I realized
I've never actually read it. It occurred to me
that we are constantly navigating through this
web of words that we just, we just accept as
fact. It is the ultimate background noise of
civilization, isn't it? Yeah. We treat street
names purely as functional tools, data points
to get us from point A to point B. We don't usually
stop and ask, you know, why is point A called
what it is? Exactly. But looking at the stack
of research we have for today. Functional is
probably the last word I would use to describe
them. These names are messy. They're deeply political.
And honestly, some of them are just bizarre.
It turns out that a street map isn't just about
geography. No, it's a historical document. It's
a political manifesto. Sometimes it's a psychological
profile of the city planners who died 200 years
ago. That is exactly what we are unpacking today.
We are going deep into the science and the drama
of street naming. We've got a massive stack of
articles, historical records, and urban planning
notes here. And our mission really is to decode
the hidden language of the city. Right. And to
start, we should probably dignify the topic with
its proper technical name. We aren't just talking
about street signs. This field of study is called
odonomy. Odonomy. It sounds a bit like a medical
condition you don't want to tell your doctor
about. It does, doesn't it? It comes from the
ancient Greek, hodos meaning road, and anoma
meaning name. So quite literally, road naming.
And while it sounds academic, it's actually one
of the most accessible forms of archaeology we
have. You don't need a shovel. You just need
to look up. So let's break down the anatomy of
these things first. Because on the surface, it
seems simple. You have a name and you have a
type, main and street. But the notes here suggest
that even that basic structure is full of traps.
It's full of marketing, actually. We break it
down into two parts. The specific, that's the
unique identifier like Maine or Broadway, and
the generic, which is the classification, like
street, avenue, or lane. The problem is the generic
is often a total fabrication. A fabrication?
You mean like fake news on a pole? In a way.
Especially in the 19th century, and even more
so today in real estate, developers use the generic
to manipulate perception. If you call a street
park avenue, You are evoking wealth, greenery,
status. Even if there's no park. It doesn't matter
if there isn't a single tree in sight and it's
just a strip of concrete. It's branding. You
see Manor Lane on a map and you picture this
winding country route with a hedge, not a cul
-de -sac behind a big box store. Precisely. It
sets a price point before you even see the house.
And historically, the grammar of these things
used to be different too. If you look at British
maps in the 1800s, you see this fascinating habit
of hyphenating. It wasn't Broad street is two
words. It was broad hyphen street, lower cases.
That feels so alien to read now. Broad street.
It turns the whole thing into a single compound
noun. Yeah, it changes the rhythm of how you
say it. It shows how language evolves on the
landscape. But if we want to get into the real
stories, we have to look at the specifics. This
is where we find what I like to call the ghosts
of history. This was my favorite part of the
reading. The idea that a name can preserve a
sensory experience from 500 years ago. We aren't
just commemorating famous people. We're labeling
what used to happen on that specific patch of
dirt. Exactly. In the modern world, we name streets
after politicians or trees. But in the medieval
world, naming was purely functional. It told
you what you would find there. It was a warning
or an advertisement or a direction. The commerce
and industry category is great for this. You
have Haymarket in London. You don't need a degree
to figure out what they were selling there. Right.
Or Cannery Row in Monterey. It's literal. But
my favorite example, and one that really highlights
how language drifts, is the shambles. You see
this street name in York and other Old English
cities? See, when I use the word shambles today,
I mean a disaster. Like, my kitchen is a shambles
after making dinner. And that definition is a
direct result of the street name. Originally,
the word comes from the Anglo -Saxon term, which
meant meat shelves. Meat shelves. Okay, that
took a turn. The shambles was the butcher's district.
These were the streets where raw meat was displayed
on open shelves, you know, directly onto the
street. So the shambles were the stalls themselves.
Oh, wow. And eventually, because of the blood,
the guts, the chaos of a slaughterhouse district,
the word shambles just morphed into meaning...
A complete mess. What creates a very vivid and
slightly gross picture. You walk down a quaint
cobblestone tourist street in York today, but
the name is basically screaming Slaughterhouse
Avenue. It's a sensory fossil. And you see it
everywhere once you start translating. Smith
Street or La Rue des Forges. That's the sound
of the hammer on the anvil. These are functional
maps of a lost economy. But then you have the
ghosts that are a bit more literal. The names
that commemorate things that were destroyed to
make room for the street itself. The landmarks
that vanished. This is where autonomy gets a
bit grim. We have a habit of naming the grave
after the victim. Wall Street is the big one
here, right? The classic example. It's a metonym
for global finance now. But originally, there
was a literal wooden wall there to protect the
Dutch settlers. The wall is long gone, but the
name freezes that defensive perimeter in time.
And Canal Street in New York, there used to be
a canal there. They filled it in and paved over
it because it became a sewer. Right. But I found
the New Orleans counterexample really funny.
Me too. New Orleans is great because it breaks
the rule. They have a canal street too. But there
was never a canal there. It's a ghost of a ghost.
Essentially. The city reserved a massive right
-of -way for a canal that they planned to dig.
They never dug it. But the name Canal Street
stuck. So in New York, you're driving on a grave.
In New Orleans, you're driving on a broken promise.
That seems very on brand for urban planning.
And speaking of New Orleans, we have to touch
on the misconceptions. Bourbon Street. Ah, yes.
The assumption everyone makes. You go there,
you drink a cocktail, you assume the street is
named after the whiskey because that's what is
happening all around you. It fits the vibe perfectly.
It's the party street. It does. But the timeline
is all wrong. The street was named in 1721. It's
named after the House of Bourbon. The French
Royal Dynasty. No way. Just like Burgundy Street
isn't named after the wine, but the House of
Burgundy. So you have thousands of tourists stumbling
around on Royal Dynasty Street thinking they
are on Whiskey Road. It's a beautiful example
of how the current use of a street overwrites
its original meaning in our minds. We project
our own context onto the sign. So we've talked
about the organic, messy history, the butchers,
the walls, the kings. But at some point, cities
stopped growing organically and started being
designed. And that's where we get the grids.
The shift from chaos to order. The grid is really
an attempt to impose logic on the landscape.
And in the U .S., that logic is almost aggressively
numerical. It's utilitarian. But I saw a stat
in the notes that confused me. The most common
street name in the U .S. isn't First Street.
It's Second Street. Over 10 ,000 of them. Which
bothers me deeply. Where did all the First Streets
go? They got promoted. First Street is usually
the most important thoroughfare. It's the starting
line. So over time, it gets renamed to Main Street,
or Commerce Street, or Front Street if it's by
the water, or it gets renamed after a local hero.
Second Street is important enough to keep its
number, but not important enough to get a fancy
name. So Second Street is the survivor. First
street sold out for the branding opportunities.
Exactly. But if you want to see a grid that really
tries to be a computer code, you have to look
at Washington, D .C. D .C. feels like a puzzle.
When you visit, you notice the letters, but then
the letters stop. It's an expanding algorithm.
The architects, L 'Enfant and Ellicott, designed
it to grow. You start with lettered street A,
B, C. When you run out of letters, you move to
two -syllable names. When you run out of those,
three -syllable names. Then flowers and shrubs,
right. Then you move to names of flowers and
shrubs. So if you're standing on Amarillo Street,
you know instantly that you are deep in the suburbs.
You know exactly how far from the center you
are just by the syllable count. But D .C. has
that famous glitch, the missing J. Right. There
is no J Street. And I've heard urban legends
about this, that the planner held a grudge against
someone named J or John J. It's much more practical
and honestly a bit more boring. In 18th century
typography and handwriting, the letters I and
J were often. They all look the same. Exactly.
They're basically interchangeable. The planners
were worried that I Street and J Street would
be confused on maps and mail. So they just deleted
J. It's a typo prevention strategy that became
permanent geography. Imagine being the letter
J and just getting canceled by a city. And then
you look at Salt Lake City. And the grid becomes
theological. This is the coordinate system, right?
The addresses look like math equations. 4570
South 4000 West. It is a math equation. The entire
city is plotted on a grid centered on the LDS
temple. That address tells you that you are exactly
45 blocks south and 40 blocks west of the temple.
It literally places the church at the center
of your existence. It does. It's brilliant for
navigation, but it lacks a certain... Meet Me
at 400 South doesn't have the same ring as Meet
Me at the Corner of Spruce and Walnut. Which
brings us to themes. When planners get tired
of numbers, they turn to themes to create an
identity. Philadelphia was the pioneer here.
William Penn laid out the city with tree names.
Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine. Which every suburb
in America has copied since. Totally. It projects
a specific image. Natural, sturdy, everlasting.
Yeah. But you see much more niche themes, too.
Gander, Newfoundland, is famous for its aviation
history, so every single street is named after
a pilot. Or the Welsh streets in Liverpool. Ringo
Starr grew up there. It creates a microculture.
It does. But my favorite anomaly in the grid
world has to be Tucson, Arizona. They have streets,
they have avenues, and then they have stravenues.
Stravenues? I assumed that was a typo in the
notes. It is a real postal -recognized designation.
It's for diagonal roads that cut across the grid.
It's a portmanteau of street and avenue. I want
to live on a stravenue. It sounds like you're
living in the future. It shows that even within
rigid systems, local quirks emerge. But, and
this is the heavy pivot, controlling the names
on the map isn't just about navigation or whimsy.
It is about power. This is the politics of renaming.
And I think this is the part of the deep dive
that really hits home. Because when a government
falls or a movement rises, the street signs are
usually the first thing to change. Absolutely.
It is the cheapest and most visible way to signal
a regime change. You are literally rewriting
the landscape. If you control the street names,
you control the public memory. We saw this play
out in real time in Zimbabwe. Yes. After independence
in 1980, there was a massive purge of colonial
names. Roads named after British generals and
royalty became roads named after Zimbabwean nationalist
leaders. It's a way of saying this land is ours
now. And it happens everywhere. Ukraine in 2014
is a huge example. The decommunization laws.
They stripped away Soviet names. There was a
street in Kiev named after Patrice Lumumba. a
Congolese independence leader, but one heavily
supported by the USSR. They renamed it after
Pope John Paul II. Wow. I mean, think about the
ideological shift there, from African Marxism
to Polish Catholicism in one sign change. It's
dizzying. And in Romania, after 1989, you saw
the same thing. But the data there was interesting.
It wasn't uniform. No, and that's the nuance.
In Bucharest, only about 6 % of streets were
renamed. But in Tamiyawara, where the revolution
started, it was 26%. The intensity of the renaming
reflected the intensity of the struggle in that
city. It's not just about politics, though. Sometimes
it's about trauma. Erasing a name because it
hurts to say it. The Malbone Street example in
Brooklyn is chilling. In 1918, there was a horrific
train crash. The Malbone Street wreck. Nearly
100 people died. The name became synonymous with
death. You couldn't sell a house on Malbone Street.
So they rebranded. They changed it to Empire
Boulevard. It sounds grand, triumphant. It washes
away the blood. We see that with Hamburg Avenue
becoming Wilson Avenue during World War I. We
didn't want to be reminded of the enemy. But
sometimes the renaming's an apology. Look at
Wong Wei in Riverside, California. Wong Wei.
That feels uncomfortable. It sounds like a bad
pun. It was almost certainly a slur, or at least
highly insensitive, marking the Chinatown area.
Years later... The city realized the implication.
They renamed it Wong Street, and they added the
Chinese characters to the sign. It turned a mockery
into a mark of respect. That brings up the dead
person rule, because naming something after a
person is risky. We love to hero worship, but
heroes are human. They can disappoint us. That
is why most cities have a mandatory waiting period.
The general rule is... Don't name a street after
someone until they are safely dead and can't
embarrass you. San Francisco learned this the
hard way with Lech Washer. They did. They named
a street after the Polish leader when he was
a global hero, Nobel Prize winner, everything.
Then, years later, he made some very public,
very anti -gay remarks. For a city like San Francisco,
that was a deal breaker. So they had to unname
it. They renamed it Dr. Tom Waddle Place in 2014.
It's embarrassing for a SETI to backtrack. It's
why you rarely see streets named after living
presidents. The risk is just too high. Except
for poets, apparently. Well, yes. San Francisco
did break their own rule for the poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti. They named an alley after him while
he was still alive. Poets are generally safer
bets than politicians. There is one more layer
to this power struggle, and that's language itself.
Not just who the street is named after, but what
language the sign is in. Language on signs is
a flag planting. Look at Brussels. It's a bilingual
city. French and Dutch. Every street has two
names. But they aren't always translations. Sometimes
they are arguments. How so? Well, sometimes it's
literal. Bergstraat becomes Rue de la Montaigne.
Mountain Street. Simple. But look at the boulevard
named after Charlemagne. In French, it's Boulevard
Charlemagne. In Dutch, it used to be Carla Mengellen.
Oh. But they changed it to Carol de Grotel and
Charles the Great. That seems subtle. It's incredibly
pointed. They are rejecting the French version
of the name and asserting the Dutch cultural
ownership of the historical figure. It's a linguistic
tug -of -war played out on metal poles. You see
that in Quebec, too. The gallicization of the
streets. Lakeshore Road wasn't French enough.
It became Chemin Lakeshore. But even that was
too franglais. The pressure was to change it
to Chemin du Bordulac. It's about telling the
resident, you are in French territory now. It's
fascinating. We think of street names as permanent,
but they are actually incredibly fluid. Which
leads us to the places where the system breaks
down completely. The anomalies. I love this section.
Because for all our grids in politics, sometimes
the world just refuses to be labeled. There are
places with no names. There are. In the Netherlands,
there is a district called Grand Voorwisch. They
decided street names were unnecessary. They just
have house numbers. Just numbers. But they start
at 13 ,000. So your address is just 13 ,005 Grand
Voorwisch. That sounds like living in a giant
filing cabinet. It's so impersonal. Contrast
that with Costa Rica. For a long time, and still
in many places, streets didn't have names at
all. Directions are entirely relational. This
is the turn left at the big mango tree system.
Literally. An official address might be from
the old church, 100 meters south, house with
the blue gate. Well, what happens if they paint
the gate red or cut down the tree? Then you get
lost. But notice the unit of measurement. They
say 100 meters, but they really mean one block.
It doesn't matter if the block is 50 meters or
200 meters long. 100 meters is just slang for
next corner. It forces you to interact with people.
You can't just follow a blue dot on a screen.
You have to ask a local where the old church
used to be. It creates a high -context society.
You have to know the history to find your way
home. On the flip side of no names, you have
the cities that have too many of the same name.
Atlanta. I'm looking at you. The Peachtree problem.
It's a comedy of errors. Peachtree Street, Peachtree
Drive, Peachtree Plaza, Peachtree Circle. Peachtree
Way, Peachtree Walk, West Peachtree. There are
dozens of them. It defeats the entire purpose
of a name, which is to be a unique identifier.
If you tell someone, meet me on Peachtree. You
might never see them again. It's chaos. Philadelphia
has a similar issue on the main line with Gulf
Road. You have Upper Gulf, Lower Gulf, Old Gulf,
New Gulf. And the best part, they intersect each
other. It's a maze. It feels like the city planners
just gave up and hit copy -paste. And when the
official names fail us, or are just too long,
we see the final layer of naming. The nicknames.
The user -generated content. The shorthand. Right.
In Chicago, nobody says Lakeshore Drive. It's
LSD. Which gives the commute a very different
psychedelic vibe. In Williamsburg, the Duke of
Gloucester Street is a mouthful, so locals call
it Dog Street. It's a way of reclaiming the city,
isn't it? The planners can put whatever they
want on the sign, but we live here, so we'll
call it what we want. It adds intimacy. It separates
the locals from the tourists. If you say the
Oz in Seattle, everyone knows you mean University
Way. It's a shibboleth. So we've covered a lot
of ground here. We've gone from the butcher shops
of medieval England to the number grids of Salt
Lake to the political battlegrounds of Ukraine.
What's the big takeaway? When I look at that
sign on the corner tomorrow, what should I be
seeing? I think you should see a fossil. A street
sign freezes a specific moment in time. What
that society valued, who was in power, or what
building just burned down. When you look at a
map, you aren't just looking at geography. you
are reading a history book written on metal poles.
That's a powerful image. It turns a commute into
a history lesson. It does. But it also raises
a question that I've been thinking about, especially
regarding new developments. What's that? If street
names are fossils of what a society values, look
at what we are building today. Look at the new
suburbs. Whispering Pines, Serenity Way, Falcon
Ridge. Exactly. We call these fantasy names.
They're marketing terms. They are chosen specifically
to be... Inoffensive, soothing, and distinct
from the urban chaos. Nobody's naming a street
The Shambles anymore. It's all very beige. So
my final thought for you, to the listener, is
this. If historians in a hundred years look at
our maps to figure out what was important to
us, what will they find? Will they see our heroes
and our history? Or will they just see a blank,
generic map of pleasant valleys? Are we erasing
our own identity by trying to be too safe? That
is a haunting thought. We might be leaving behind
a map that says absolutely nothing about who
we were. A map of ghosts without names. Well,
on that cheerful note, thank you for guiding
us through the streets today. I'm definitely
going to take the long way home and read some
signs. Watch out for the Strava News. Will do.
Thanks for listening to this deep dive. Check
your signs, people. You never know what you might
find.