Hey, I do! I live near Maple Avenue now, and used to live near one of the Braddocks.
Isn’t it because the road name describes the destination? When you’re in Durham you take the Chapel Hill road to get to Chapel Hill, and when you’re in Chapel Hill you take the Durham road to get to Durham.
Another reason, that I don’t think has been covered, is when they honor someone by naming a stretch of road after them, but not the entire road. I can think of a few Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevards like that. The aforementioned Leesburg Pike in Northern Virginia (the new one, apparently) is called the Harry Flood Byrd Memorial Highway once it gets into Loudoun County I think (and Market Street once it’s in Leesburg proper). Of course, nobody really calls it that, it’s just Route 7 all the way west from its origins as King Street in Alexandria.
That’s the first reason I thought of. I wish Dopers would stop reading my mind!
About 10 minutes after submitting my post, I realized that “chagrin” had a meaning in English too…:smack: I blame it on living my life in Frenglish.
Naming it after a nice place makes sense, and I’m sure for people in the area it’s what they think of first when they see the name. The way you worded it, though, still made me laugh!
Going back further, though, do you know what prompted people to name the town “Chagrin” Falls? I wonder if there was once a negative connotation to it, such as a death or something (I’m assuming there is a waterfall in the area).
I’d be interested in finding out the history to another street name change in Montreal; why does Park become Bleury become St. Pierre, all in the space of less than half a kilometre?
I work for County Government in the department that is in charge of street naming. We work with the planning department and approve or disapprove names requested by developers. In the past, we had no such cooperation, so we have duplicate street names. This can cause confusion for residents and visitors. But our real concern is 911.
For instance, we have a number of Lakeview streets. If someone asks for help at such and such Lakeview, and they don’t really know where they are (a tourist for instance), help can, and has been sent to the wrong location. This is one reason why we may change street names. It’s a royal pain to get people to agree. You can’t imagine how much some people fight it.
In the County that I live (I work in a different county) they are in the process of changing about 50 street names because of duplicates.
Did it cross former municipal boundaries? (Did you guys go through a phase of municipal amalgamation like we did?)
IIRC, all of the Cleveland-area Chagrins (the Falls, the road, etc.) are named after the Chagrin River, the name of which, according to Wiki,
…stems from what the local Erie Indians used to call it, the “Sha-ga-rin”, or “Clear Water”. Given the clear flowing nature of especially the East Branch of the river, this name is appropriate. Another hypothesis attributes the name of the river to a corruption and anglicization of the name of a French trader, Sieur de Saguin.
Politics sometimes plays a role in renaming streets. I remember in the mid-1980s, the Washington, D.C. city government renamed the section of street on which the South African embassy was located “Nelson Mandela Way” to embarrass the Apartheid regime’s diplomats, who had to use the new address to get their mail.
Not exactly on topic, but there is an intersection in Arlington, Va., where South Glebe Rd., which is heading east, meets West Glebe Rd., which is heading south. There is also an East Glebe Rd., which is also to the south of South Glebe Rd.
Hehe reminds me of giving directions in Denver.
I was trying to tell a guy how to get to my place n NW Denver from south Aurora.
"First you get onto Parker road, heading northwest, it twists and turns all over the place, but just follow the road because it is all Parker…
Well until is until it isn’t, you will suddenly be on Leetsdale, but you won’t even notice.
Then you turn onto Alameda, except you really don’t turn, you just go around what seems like a bend and you are on Alameda,
then ummm from Alameda you turn onto Steele. Except you don’t make a turn, the road changes around another bend, then bends back and you are on First Ave, which turns into Speer without you noticing. Speer then bends all over the place to follow the river, until you cross the Interstate when it takes one last bend and becomes Irving…
"
My friend was not impressed.
Not quite the same thing, because technically there are a lot of turns, onto what should be different roads, but because the way it turns and twists all over the place guiding you forward it’s hard to describe.
Being very familiar with the area, I would like to know. 
I forgot to mention back in my younger days working with GIS Mapping…
Old GIS software had a hell a problem with this. Each section of one street would have a different name through each little old town, Cooper road, James St, Ugly Creek rd .etc. But the commonly used name by locals was just Elm Ave or something for the whole thing. And the GIS surveyors just called the whole thing Elm, like everybody else…everybody but the USPS. The USPS used all the little names because the numbers would repeat otherwise. 328 Cooper, 328 James, and 328 Ugly creek all existed. Which on the GIS ended up as 3 different 328 Elm streets, and the software couldn’t rectify.
Man that caused a lot of problems. :mad:
If anyone has spent much time driving in Charlotte they will know it is common for the same road to have three or four names within the city limits. I’m sure some of it has to do with the joining of different roads together. Another reason I have heard is years ago some of the white population did not want to live on the same street that black people live on so when neighborhoods changed so would the street name.
Inter-city towns are sometimes named after where they lead to.
Good example; The road connecting the center of Lexington MA to the center of Waltham MA is “Lexington Street” in Waltham and “Waltham Street” in Lexington.
Both cities were incorporated in the early 1700’s and were probably around long before that.
I admit I haven’t checked the historical maps but it seems reasonable that back when both towns were much smaller, with probably only a cart path between them, each town would refer to the path by the name of where it led to.
That’s “inter-city streets”…what do you expect from someone with my handle?
One different example is in Schenectady where Michigan Avenue become Brandywine Avenue. The two streets were on the opposite sides of a large ravine. When the ravine was used for a highway, a bridge connected the two. Thus, if you get off on the Michigan Avenue exit westbound, you end up on Brandywine Avenue.
A similar thing happened near my old home. I lived on Wells Avenue. A new road was added as an extension but given the name Jockey Creek Drive. Another instance not far from there was Calves Neck Road becoming Hill Road becoming Jernick Lane. Again, new roads were added that were extending an existing road, but were given new names.
There’s also Troy-Schenectady Road, which was originally Troy Road in Schenectady and Schenectady Road in Troy; they’ve added both names.
I grew up there too!
Also - the road between Schenectady and Albany is “State Street” in Schenectady and “Central Avenue” in Albany. Of course the State just calls it “Route 5”
Yes, there has been a municipal amalgamation (and some de-amalgamation of some areas coughWestmountcough), but the street was triple-named before the amalgamation. Perhaps it’s merely the result of the various towns/municipalities growing into one another.
Looking at a map, perhaps St. Pierre wasn’t continuous with Park/Bleury until they built the Ville-Marie tunnel (highway 720). I suppose Bleury is in the “Ville-Marie” borough, which would at one point have been a different town than the Plateau (Park).