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#27518 04/28/01 08:46 AM
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#27519 04/28/01 10:51 AM
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It was a leg-pull, Rouspeteur.

But as you say, developers have a field day with bad names. The suburb next to mine has streets named after trees and shrubs. Laurel Grove. Acacia Avenue. Cypress Grove. Mulberry Street. Refused to live there on principle.

On the other hand, I live in Titiro Moana Road. Sounds fancy, huh! But literally translated from the Maori, the name is Eye Sea Road. Seaview Road, in other words. Now there's a banal name!



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#27520 04/28/01 01:03 PM
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In Hobart, we have a "Montpelier Retreat".


#27521 04/28/01 07:44 PM
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Other way round, ya goomer! What I actually said was that as of June 1st, there would be one more Brit on the Board, and one less Kiwi - a reference to a certain Kiwi taking flight for Mudder Englind!

Oh, silly me. Mine is definitely smaller than other people's. Well, you can take the boy out of Zild, but can you take the Zild out of the boy .... ?



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#27522 04/28/01 10:49 PM
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There is an area in Madrid where all the streets are named after world seas: Mar Mediterráneo, Mar de Kara, Mar Caspio, Mar Negro, Mar Amarillo, Mar Rojo, Mar de Aral, Mar Báltico... Most people living there know which one is their street, and everyone knows Mar Caspio because the Post Office is there... but they are all very confused about all the others. Most they can say when you ask for directions is "It must be somewhere around here"... which is not very helpful!


Spellchecking this post has provided me with the biggest laugh all day today:
Mar [marathon]
Mediterráneo [medium]
Kara [Karachi]
Caspio [Cassandra]
Rojo [Roland]
Aral [Aramco]
Báltico... [blubber]


I especially like Cassandra and blubber...


#27523 04/30/01 08:34 AM
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What names are there for a public thoughfare?

A bridleway is a class of route in the UK. Originally, I guess, an unpaved path where you could ride a horse but not necessarily take a carriage or cart.

Also a truly wonderful word that I miss since I left Yorkshire is 'ginnel'. This refers to the kind of alleyway left between gardens in housing estates that allows you to get from one streeet to the next on foot more quickly than the circuitous route a car driver would have to take.

AS for 'mews', according to my Shorter Oxford these were originally places where hawks were kept, then became stables and are now apparently fit for human habitation. Not sure if this is progress...


#27524 04/30/01 09:12 AM
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Street names
Any geographical feature can be used in Street addresses: View, Spinney, Copse, Wood, Mead, Bank , Green, Croft, Glades, Rise. Also in this port town I live in, we have in addition to those already mentioned: Esplanade, Promenade, The Hard, Quay, Passage (yes to your question), Wharf, Harbour
For driving roads we in UK have Motorway, Bypass, A (and B) Road, Trunk Road.

Ro-a-d


#27525 04/30/01 11:31 AM
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Great posts.
As Rod pointed out there seems to be a wide scope for street names in English. Other languages don't seem nearly as adventurous. True?


#27526 04/30/01 12:23 PM
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There's a little neighborhood near mine in Atlanta where the streets are named Geneva, Placid, Michigan, Constance, Erie usw. It calls itself the Lake District. I have never found Wordsworth there, though the daffodils this spring were a host.


#27527 04/30/01 03:00 PM
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Also a truly wonderful word that I miss since I left Yorkshire is 'ginnel'. This refers to the kind of alleyway left between gardens in housing estates that allows you to get from one streeet to the next on foot more quickly than the circuitous route a car driver would have to take.

These are paved in Western (and probably other parts of) Canada and I call them people-paths. I got that one from an old friend.

I was suprised to realize that Street and Avenue don't seem to have the same geometrical connotation everywhere. In a "typical" Canadian city (i.e. not St. John's), Streets run north-south and Avenues run east-west, and both are approximately the same size. Like Rouspeteur said, you can easily tell where someone lives by the number, even if you've never been to the city before. However, it doens't apply in St. John's. We live at a corner of two Streets. My father (a land surveyor) would be greatly displeased.

Some other good ones are "Bay" (a U-shaped residential street), "Extension" (my friend lives on Howley Avenue Extension - not to be confused with Howley Avenue itself). There are lots of hills in St. John's, my favourite being "Hill O'Chips" (I kid you not!).

And "Trails" are the main roads in Calgary, Alberta. Others would call them freeways, I guess, but in Calgary you have Deerfoot Trail (fondly called just "the Deerfoot"), Sarcee Trail, Bow Bottom Trail, Barlow Trail, Blackfoot Trail, Glenmore Trail, and more...all multi-lane divided hellish roads. Calgary's other problem is the aforementioned theme neighbourhoods. There are neighbourhoods where the main word is all the same, and the streets only differ in whether they're "street", "Bay", "Court", "Close", "Boulevard", and so on. ARGH. My parents live in a neighbourhood where all the street names start with "Can".


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