In which Doris wonders if every French town is required to have a street named after Emile Zola.
Once again on entering a town the Little Box of Rightness utters the instruction “Turn into Rue Emile Zola then continue to Place Victor Hugo”. Which got me thinking about the French habit of naming streets after people. And gloriously Mathieu Garnier and r have not only already had this thought, they have also produced the amazing chart below.
I bet somewhere behind the scenes they have a pivot table to see who gets the most Places (big), Rues (medium), Chemins (small) and Impasses (microscopic). And if not, then maybe now they will.
PS This science is called Odonymy. Might come in useful in a game of Scrabble some day.
PPS Sid and Doris’ ancestral homes are in Wellington Square and Nelson Road btw.
Hey Doris what about a chart for UK street names? Bet Church Lane is tops. Oh, maybe High Street. Surely Google Maps has an api or is scrapable in some way to get the data. Obviously you’ll categorise as above (armee/guerre is gonna be up there, as for French streets…my sister lives on Picton Street, though surely that’s due for a rename now that Picton’s portrait has (rightfully) had the Colston treatment). I confidently expect a pivot table straight off 😄 Type of road, also county, decade, etc., please! 😊
This is the most splendid digression and has led me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_name, which tells me that the most common street name in the USA is “Second”. I have also just remembered contributing to a project called StrEats of London a while ago, which was collecting all the streets named after food in the City of London. It’s now expanded to include the whole of Greater London here https://www.behance.net/gallery/8132537/Streats-of-London