# Rural Ohio community with all African street names **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 7, 2022, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868 "2022-10-07T05:03:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2022, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/61 "2022-10-10T19:00:59Z")
I just did some research to see if those names are in Tolkien’s works. One of them isn’t. There is a Crickhollow in Tolkien’s works but not a Creekhollow. ---
**Author:** ![phs3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8491ac/32.png) [@phs3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phs3)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/62 "2023-08-09T03:51:35Z")
There’s a Derosnec Drive near me (read it backwards). I’m sure there’s a story there! ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/63 "2023-08-09T04:01:41Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I just did some research to see if those names are in Tolkien’s works. One of them isn’t. There is a Crickhollow in Tolkien’s works but not a Creekhollow. I wonder if that one was named by someone for whom “creek” is pronounced “crick”? And don’t forget Furnace Road and Mordor Drive, in Northern Virginia. Sadly, no other roads nearby are named from Tolkien’s works - but Mordor Drive was deliberately named that because it connects to Furnace Road. Our neighborhood has bland Ye Oldee Englishee street names, for the most part. One of them drives me buggy - in an attempt to sound classy, they strung together two words that make no sense: Sir {title}. Unless there’s someone whose name is {title}, this is a structure that would never appear in England. More correctly, if you had someone with that title, who was also a knight or baronet, they might go by {title} Sir John Smith or whatever. Another neighborhood a few miles away has streets named after King Arthur and related characters. A friend who lives there never noticed until we pointed out that Guinevere and Arthur do not intersect, but Guinevere and Lancelot do. That had to have been deliberate. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/64 "2023-08-09T11:46:19Z")
On the west side of Jacksonville, FL: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/M9MB4MX.jpeg "Imgur: The magic of the Internet") ](https://imgur.com/M9MB4MX) Too cutesy for me. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/65 "2023-08-09T11:57:19Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > On the west side of Jacksonville, FL: > [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](https://imgur.com/M9MB4MX) > Too cutesy for me. - I want to live on Burpee Dr. And I’m amused by Lane Ave. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/66 "2023-08-09T12:00:02Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > And I’m amused by Lane Ave. My husband worked at a wire mill on Lane Ave for years. Maybe it was named for a guy named Lane? ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/67 "2023-08-09T13:03:43Z")
> [@Bonum\_Legatum](#): > > Old joke: “The subdivision developers knock down all the trees, then name the streets after them.” In the mid-1990s we lived in a small plat in Kettering Ohio. A block away was a fairly large, heavily wooded area. I would occasionally go hiking in it. A few years later a developer bought the land, cut down all the trees, built a huge mall, and called it [The Greene](https://www.thegreene.com/). I told my wife that they should have called it, “Used to be Green.” ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/68 "2023-08-09T13:28:59Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > My husband worked at a wire mill on Lane Ave for years. Maybe it was named for a guy named Lane? Lexington MA has a Lois Lane. No Della Street, though. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/69 "2023-08-09T13:57:47Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > We already have a number of Lakeview Drives for instance. My pet peeve is, do any of those streets have a view of a lake? We have a Lakeview Blvd. that ends near a lake, but none of the lots on the street have a lake view. . Someone back in the early 1900s named our North/South-running streets after Presidents. But not in order! How hard could it have been? I always imagine a planning meeting: “Sam, you’ve got the parallel streets named Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, Adams… why, for God’s sake?” “Well, I wanted to put Lincoln next to Washington because they were such good friends.” “No, they were not!” “Well, I think of them that way…” “Washington was dead when Lincoln was born!” “Oh… so, I’ll put Lincoln next to Franklin, then.” ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/70 "2023-08-09T14:07:23Z")
Portland OR has a sequence of alphabetical street names (A-Y) as described here: [Streets of the Alphabet District - Slabtown Tours - N & NW Portland Walking Tours](https://slabtowntours.com/streets-of-the-alphabet-district/) Brossard (a Montreal suburb) has lettered “sections” where all the streets start with the same letter - like Bramalea (as described in a previous post). I think they shared the same developer. Another Montreal suburb - Verdun - has streets named named by an early 1900’s mayor - after his sister (Ethyl) and his daughters (Evelyn and Gertrude). Of course - he named a major street after himself (Hadley). Also in the early 1900’s - Canadian railways in western Canada often named their stations alphabetically (usually 10-15 miles apart in those days) - but often skipping letters, while including Q’s and Z’s… ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/71 "2023-08-09T14:38:40Z")
There’s a neighborhood in a northern suburb near me that has streets named after (mostly) PTO WWII battles; e.g., Iwo Jima Ct, Guadalcanal St, Coral Sea St, Dunkirk St, Midway Ct, Leyte St, Kiska St, and an Okinawa Cir. They tend to be shorter streets, and they are mixed in with Harpers St, Edison St, Jamestown St, and numbered streets. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/72 "2023-08-09T14:43:40Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > 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? Longfellow was a highly regarded poet and was widely read in the late 19th and early 20th century in the US. When the town was platted people may have known the allusions. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/73 "2023-08-09T15:25:07Z")
> [@gnarator](#): > > Longfellow was a highly regarded poet and was widely read in the late 19th and early 20th century in the US. When the town was platted people may have known the allusions. When the town (Columbia, Maryland) was planned (no earlier than 1962), Longfellow was no longer quite that widely read, I think. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/74 "2023-08-09T16:02:13Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > > [@running\_coach](#): > > > > And I’m amused by Lane Ave. > > My husband worked at a wire mill on Lane Ave for years. Maybe it was named for a guy named Lane? Quite likely. There’s a Lane County in Oregon named after some congressman. But there’s a long list of redundantly named streets on Wikipedia. It doesn’t have Lane Ave, but perhaps I’ll add it if no one else does: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_tautological\_place\_names#Streets\_and\_roads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_names#Streets_and_roads) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/75 "2023-08-09T16:50:39Z")
In Bozeman, all of the east-west streets that intersect with the Montana State campus are named after presidents, in order, from Grant at the south end through Cleveland at the north end (only one Cleveland Street; the next one north of that is College Street). But then some developer who apparently didn’t know their history put in a new street just south of Grant, and named it Lincoln. Several of the major streets in downtown Cleveland have lake names: The heart of the city is the intersection of Superior Avenue and Ontario Boulevard, and Huron and St. Claire are nearby. I’m told that East 9th used to be named Erie, but I’ve never found where Michigan is or was. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/76 "2023-08-09T16:53:07Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > 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. We had one of those, too. My aunt lived near. Also my grandparents lived on “cigarette hill” - the names were cigarette brand names. It was built in the 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/77 "2023-08-09T17:27:58Z")
When VT went to enhanced 911 a lot of streets that didn’t have names go them. I know of at least one Four Wheel Drive and Skid Row. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/78 "2023-08-09T17:36:42Z")
I have a great-uncle who lives in a rural area, and whose sparsely-populated street got named after him when the county upgraded 911 service. They probably would have allowed a whimsical name, if he wanted (so long as it wasn’t already taken). ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/79 "2023-08-09T17:57:36Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > all of those guys turned traitor to their country and states To their country, but not their states. In those days people said “the United States are” – when the states seceded, many people considered loyalty to their states more important than loyalty to the collection of states. I believe it wasn’t until after the North won that war that “the United States is” became more common than “the United States are”. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868/80 "2023-08-09T18:09:54Z")
To their states as well. The Supreme Law of the state of Virginia defined what Lee did as treason. Virginia agreed to adopt that Supreme Law. And in fact, the government of the state of Virginia itself condemned what the traitors were doing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rural-ohio-community-with-all-african-street-names/972868.md?page=5)