I’ve recently found a couple examples of roads that run along township lines and that have a name that’s a portmanteau of those townships’ names. I already knew of a few other road names composed this way, and I strongly suspect there are more. So I’m looking for help finding them. My list so far is:
[ul]
[li] Alcan Highway – another name for the Alaska Highway[/li][li] Canusa Street – along the border of Beebe Plain, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec[/li][li] Fitchrona Road – on the townline between Fitchburg, Wisconsin and Verona (town), Wisconsin (Dane County)[/li][li] Ken Tenn Highway – another name for Tennessee state hwy 214[/li][li] Millfair Road – along the line between Millcreek and Fairview Townships in Erie County, Pennsylvania[/li][/ul]
There’s also Delmar Boulevard in St Louis which turns out to be a portmanteau of Delaware and Maryland. The street went along the property boundary of two landowners, one of whom was a Delawarean and the other a Marylander. But it’s a long ways away from those two states.
Note that not all these roads run along a border. The Alcan and Ken Tenn Highways do not. So don’t look at that as a requirement. It’s just that roads running along borders are more likely to be named this way.
Some of you (one or two perhaps) may remember similar requests I’ve made in the past. As in previous requests, I am looking for additions to a wiki-list: List of geographic portmanteaus. I’m asking specifically for road names (they’re in the Other Border Portmanteaus section for now), because I’m fairly sure there’s a bunch not on that list. But if you know of one for another category that’s not on the list, feel free to let me know. Or add it yourself, if you want, I don’t care. (There are some people who feel a list they compiled is their list and don’t want anyone else [del]messing it up[/del] editing it. I am not one of those people.)
BTW, there’s one category that there are no entries in the list: streams. There are several lakes with portmanteau names, but no rivers, creeks, or other streams. You’d think there’d be at least a few small creeks named this way and there probably are. But I don’t know of any. So feel free to contribute any of those you know of.
I don’t know of any additional portmanteau roads, but after skimming your Wikipedia list, I have what may be a novel category for you: school districts.
In Chicago’s west suburbs, there is the Glenbard school district, which features four high schools (Glenbard North, Glenbard South, Glenbard West, and Glenbard East). The name is a portmanteau of two of the larger suburbs in the district: Glen Ellyn and Lombard.
Chicago is in Cook County. Just to the north is Lake County. The road that runs along much of the border is (unimaginatively) named Lake Cook Road. Is that the kind of thing you are looking for?
On a slightly related note, there is sort of a tradition in Chicago (and probably elsewhere) for businesses to name themselves after the corner they are on (or near). Thus you have the Clarkville Tavern at the corner of Clark Street and Granville Avenue, and many others I can’t think of at the moment.
Sort of. I do have a rule (it’s in the lede of the article) that says merely concatenating two names does not count as a portmanteau. So that one is disqualified for that reason. If they’d taken part of one name and combined it with part of the other, that would be ideal. Those two names, being so short, would be hard to do and still make it obvious that that’s what they did.
I’ll consider that one. I do have to consider the length of the total list. It’s already fairly long. If there’s a huge number of these, it may be more than is desireable. I already did that for roads that have acronym names (in the companion acronym list). It seems like there’s a lot of colleges and universities that name a road on their campus with their acronym. Also a fair number of companies.
Ooh. Good one.
Already in the list. You can use you browser’s search function (cntl-F) to do a quick check for this.
This one and the other school district you contributed may be put in the Initialisms section of the acronym list, rather than the portmanteau list. I somewhat arbitrarily made up a “rule” that those from three or more other words belong there and those from only two go in the portmanteaus. That accords with the origin of portmanteaus[sup]1[/sup] of being blends of only two words. But I don’t consider it a hard-and-fast rule and occasionally violate it.
[sup]1[/sup] Which pre-date Carroll by quite some time, BTW. He made up the name; he didn’t invent the concept.
The Melbourne suburb of Warranwood is named for its neighbors, Ringwood and Warrandyte and contains (briefly) a Warranwood Road.
I feel like the suburb itself probably belongs somewhere on that page too, but none of the currently listed categories seem to be the right granularity to fit it
The town of Marshfield, Wisconsin is located just south of the line between Marathon and Wood counties. Although I’m not aware of any road that combines the names, it’s not uncommon for businesses in the area to use “Marawood” or “Marwood” in their name. A quick Google search shows a Marawood Construction Services in Marshfield, for example. And a couple of decades ago my family stayed at the Marwood Motor Inn while visiting relatives in the area, although that place has long since been demolished. That was a rather crummy old motel that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1950s. We only stayed there because every other motel in town was full due to some event in town.
It would go in the subsection named “Blends of town names”, the same one that SeaTac is in. And thanks for the non-North American addition. Way too much of the list is in US or Canada, so it’s good to get more from the rest of the world.
Yes, good. I’m wondering whether to make a subsection titled “Connectors”, for things that are named for two places/things they connect. This and Floribraska Ave that someone else suggested above would go there as well as the Bakerloo Line from the London Underground.
I’ve decided not to add in every business that uses this kind of name. Way too many of them and businesses don’t really count as geographic names, unless they name the town after them. (There’s a good-sized list of towns named after businesses in the acronym list, by the way.) If people use the name for the general area and not just for those businesses, it’d qualify for addition, although it’d be nice to get a reference to support it.
Very good. Going by the borders on Google maps*, it looks like part of it runs along the border between Wantagh and North Bellmore and the rest between Bellmore and North Bellmore. That’s good enough for me.
if you search for just a city name, it usually shows it highlighted, so you can see the city limits. That is, if it’s an incorporated city or a census designated place, both of which have definite boundaries. Places without definite boundaries don’t get this treatment.