I came across this development in rural Stark County, Ohio. It was built around 1980 and all the street names are African terms; Uganda Parkway, Hippo Dr, Watusi Way, Lion Rd, etc. Got to be a story there but I haven’t uncovered it yet.
It’s sort of like Columbia, Maryland, where each neighborhood has its street names be taken from just one source. This can be from one author or one artist or something like that. This means that there are a lot of strange names for the streets that you can’t find anywhere else.
Themed street names in residential developments are pretty frequent in Germany - streets in a residential quarter zoned and developed at the same time named after flowers, birds, rivers, mountains, countries, etc. - I have encountered Esperantoweg next to Volapükweg once, i.e. the theme was conlangs.
Is that not a frequent thing in US residential developments?
Yes, it’s pretty common. For example, a subdivision near a place I worked long ago was off of Sherwood Forest Lane, and all the street names were Robin Hood references. My current home is in a neighborhood with a sun/star-themed naming convention. I sometimes suspect that developers just have a list of themes and throw darts at it.
There are worse approaches, I suppose. Years ago, I was doing a lot of driving for work in Tulsa, where they tried very hard for a long time to have a rational street naming system. Unfortunately, I sometimes found places where the system had a conniption, like the intersection of 26th Street (which had been East 26th Terrace a block before), 26th Place, and 26th Court. I’ll take distinctive street names over that confusion, even if the theme is drawn out of a hat.
It happens but it is usually quite bland - Oak, Elm, Poplar, and Aspen Streets, for example.
Depending on when the OP’s community was named, I can imagine all sorts of possibly offensive names that could have been assigned at the time - Pygmy Circle, Rhodesia Way, etc. Conversely, it could also be quite cool to give voice to African names. Probably depends on who is doing it, when they are doing it, and why.
It’s very common. There’s a neighborhood near me where all the streets are names of birds, and another with names of lakes. And that’s just within a few miles of my house.
I always wanted to have a community where the streets were named after SF greats - Asimov Street, Bradbury Lane, Clarke Way, Del Ray Avenue, etc.
‘Fred, where is north?’
‘North? North is there, my love.
The brook runs west.’
‘West-running Brook then call it.’
(West-running Brook men call it to this day.)
–Robert Frost, after whose works the streets in the Running Brook neghborhood of Columbia are named
While it’s true there are many neighborhoods with themed street names, the one shown for Stark County is a private entity, and the “streets” are probably private. It’s called the Springwood Lake Camp Club, and is an RV park.
There’s a development I’ve passed a few times where all the streets are named after great composers. And the town I’m living in now has a neighborhood (a real one, not a development) called “birdtown”, because a lot of the streets have bird names.
The interesting thing about the names of streets in Columbia, Maryland is that when you first hear them, you just find them strange. It’s only later that you learn that all the names in a neighborhood come from a single author. They don’t use names that you would quickly realize that they’re all related. They just sound like someone just picked a bunch of random words and phrases with no connections to each other.
Except in the neighborhoods of Longfellow and Hobbit’s Glen, whose names provide the clue.
Is it really true that people would recognize names like Celestial, Evangeline, Mad River, Blacksmith, Iron Pen, and Harvest Moon as all coming from Longfellow? Yes, if you hear the name of the neighborhood, you might then think that it has something to do with the author Longfellow. Without the name of the neighborhood though, would you recognize the names of the streets?
Here’s a neighborhood of airline-related names:
Dulles Airport is a couple miles north.
The streets in the neighborhood where I was born and raised are all named after golf pros. That’s because there used to be a golf course there, which was razed in the 1940s to make way for a new suburb. It would take a golf history major, though, to recognize the names of the old pros: Essexfells, Stranahan, Siwanoy, etc.
I understand the old golf course was a very fashionable place in the 1920s, when Hollywood elite would drive miles east of Los Angeles to play golf and polo.
School bus stops in one neighborhood.
Vermillion Ln & Vermillion Way
Vermillion Way & Vermillion Ln
Vermillion Dr & Vermillion Way
Vermillion Dr & Village Way
Vermillion Ln & Viking Ln
Vermillion Ln & Vermont Ln
Vermillion Ln & Viaduct Ln
Vermont Ln & Vestry Ln
I work GIS for county government. One of our jobs is to approve street and subdivision names.
We can be strict. We will NOT accept duplicated names. We already have a number of Lakeview Drives for instance. That’s a tremendous headache for 911/Emergency services. The street name must be unique. Subdivision names too. You can of course have different filings of subdivisions. Or a Pine CT off of Pine DR. But they must be connected/contiguous.
It get’s harder as the county grows. Developers are notorious for putting the cart before the horse. They will spend thousands on marketing, before a subdivision plat/road names are approved. Changing a road name is a bit more complicated than just putting up a new sign.
The names the OP showed for Springwood Lake Camp Club would all past muster I think. Tanganyika Trail would get talked about though.
I live in a different county than I work in. You could call it a subdivision, as it it subdivided. The county wanted to rename the roads because of duplicates in the other part of the county. Fine. The county wanted to do a bird theme and asked for suggestions. Every one of the road would have to agree to the new name.
There are two of us on this road. I was going to suggest Chicken Crossing RD. Or Loon LN. The other owner loves it. Apparently this project entirely fell apart and no road names have been changed. Not surprised, it’s a real pain in the ass to do.
For Discourse.
Well known to New Orleans locals are the Nine Muses streets in Uptown.
If using Google Maps or similar, type in “St. Charles Ave and Calliope St, New Orleans”. This corner is a block south of Harmony Circle (renamed from Lee Circle), right where the elevated Pontchartrain Expressway passes over St. Charles Avenue.
From there, you follow St. Charles seven blocks southwest. You will cross the following streets:
Clio St
Erato St
Thalia St
Melpomene St
Terpsichore St
Euterpe St
Polymnia St
Urania St is there, too, but it is only a block and half long – it runs into Fecility St before getting as far as St. Charles.
There are a couple of St. Louis suburbs where all of the streets are just combinations of the same five or six syllables. Oakmont Glen. Glenmont Oak. Montoak Glen. Glen Oak Mont. And so on.