I want that job. You know, the guy who decides that this neighborhood is going to have composer names for their streets, while that neighborhood is going to name all the girls he dated. The man who has the power to make envelope addressing a living hell when he names the new road “Avenida De Las Cabrillos” or something equally long. That’s the job I want.
But seriously, who gets to decide what a street name is going to be? If it is a neighborhood put up by a developer, does the developer? Are there special rules for naming streets (ala no two streets with the same name in the same zip code)? Are there lists/guidelines of acceptable street names and unacceptable street names?
And who decides what’s a lane and what is a drive and what is a road and what is a street? Are there standards for each?
Local convention may dictate usage of St, Ave, Ln, Rd, etc., but the only people who can actually bitch are the folks in the recorder’s office who must accept the plats (lot maps) for inclusion in the city.
If you are building a “new city”, no limits - but finding people willing to pay money to live on “Xhanfiorhjt Lane” might be a trick.
In some towns, you will notice that streets change names at certain points - the new developer didn’t like the name of the existing street, so he re-named his extension of it.
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*Originally posted by JohnT
If it is a neighborhood put up by a developer, does the developer?
In some instances, yes. My dead dog Bob is famous for a lot of things (Baba Wawa made a joke about him) but he also had a street named after him (sorta - “Husky Lane”). I was the first person to buy a lot in a new subdivision and the developer named the street.
Are there special rules for naming streets (ala no two streets with the same name in the same zip code)?
It’s a zip code thing and a fire district/county thing. You don’t want too many streets called “Riverview” e.g., since the fire department could respond to 4 different addresses if the realtors had the naming rights.
Are there lists/guidelines of acceptable street names and unacceptable street names?
By county/city, yes. New street names cannot be the same as existing street names in most places. And you’re unlikely to get “Squaw Creek” or “P. Ness” as a street name.
And who decides what’s a lane and what is a drive and what is a road and what is a street? Are there standards for each?
Basically, it’s up to the local road district/city or county board. A lane is a road is a street, but a circle is a dead end.
My Dad got to name a street when they were the first to move into the subdivision way out in the forest. Omega Rd. Although there has been some effort to Hawaiianize it into Omeka Rd. But I think it’s still officially Omega Rd. with whoever’s in charge of that stuff. So that’s the way it worked in Hawaii Co., Hawaii in 1972 or so.
The subdivision I live in has streets named by the developer. Judging by the name of my street, I wonder if his favorite book was “In Cold Blood” (I live on Capote Drive).
One neighboring subdivision’s developer named all the streets after family members, resulting in names like “Melanie St”, “Brian Rd”, etc. The subdivision across the road must have been developed by a computer geek, with names like “Memory Lane” and “Disc Drive”.
“Disc Drive” !!! I hope I haven’t been whooshed on this one…though I can certainly imagine it! I a so sure my SO would LOVE to live on that street! hehehe
In the city of Los Angeles, the builders of any new streets name them subject to the approval of the City Planning Department. The Office of Address Assignment also has to sign off.
Of course, the City Council can vote to change the name of a street later.
I wish the developers would show a little imagination. I’m so sick to death of seeing neighborhoods with street names like Oakmont Terrace, Quit Glen, Glenmont Oak, and so on.
I’m going to build a subdivision and name the streets after cartoon characters. Spongebob, Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Beavis, Butthead, etc.
BTW, some years ago I remember a news story about some subdivision that was being built. Neighbors in the area vehemently opposed it for some reason, took the developers to court, yada yada yada. The developers won the right to build, and when they named the streets… they named them after the people who opposed the development! Talk about vindictive!
In places where you don’t have a street naming scheme that is enacted by ordinance or bylaw, the developer names the streets. There’s usually rules regarding the suffix (street, avenue, way, etc,), and often rules regarding duplication of street names, ease of pronunciation, prohibited street names, and so on.
In many cities in the Midwestern and Western US and in Canada’s prairie and western provinces, there are pre-designated street names for imaginary grid lines; any street built following close to the line gets the name, with the address number used to determine the distance of an address from a baseline. Relatively well-known grids among planners include those of Chicago, Denver, and Johnson County, Kansas (KCMO southwest 'burbs).
Some cities, particularly in the eastern US, have very few rules regarding street names or suffixes. This includes Buffalo (where street names often change when they cross other major streets), Boston (with streets following cowpaths instead of a grid), and Atlanta (with its hundreds of “Peachtree Street” variants).
1st is the builder - he builds the road he can name it.
2nd the town planning dept. If the builder didn’t name it or his name is rejected and doesn’t come up with another one the planning dept has a list of names which they could add to or pull from (this is where my wife comes in).
Reasons for denial are, same name being used in the town, too simular to an exhisting name and if the 1st 3 letters are the same as an existing is it strongly suggested to change it.
In smaller cities without a predefined naming grid, usually the developer of a parcel will just think of names that sound good, and puts them on the preliminary subdivision plat. Las Cruces, New Mexico has a lot of “Avenida de …” and “Calle de …” names. The city’s street naming code prevents cross-lingual duplication (so you can’t have both a “Calle de Loma Vista” and “Hillview Street”), and the use of ethnic names that might be difficult to pronounce by Hispanics or Anglos (“Calle de Xuchimatzatzin” or “Pfohl Road”). When I was a planner there in a past life, some developers would try to get away with silly Spanish street names, such as “Calle Manteca” and “Avenida de los Chingaderas.”
In larger cities, where there are large scale builders and far more attention is given to marketing, a marketing team will create the street names. There may be a concession or two to the builder, though, such as a street named after a former land owner or builder’s daughter.
The trend of naming streets after former landowners or themselves is largely past, though. In the early 1900s, where you had solid ethnic communities, nobody thought twice about living on “Klopp Street,” “Muffoletto Street” or “Dzieduszycki Avenue.” (In Buffalo, it’s possible to live on the corner of Schlenker Street and Rommel Avenue, or Sobieski Avenue and Stanislaus Street.) Now, though, developers realize that such street names may be a turn-off to a clientele that spans various ethnic groups. Ethnic-sounding street names in the US now tend to be Spanish (evocative of California or Spain, not the barrio or Central America), Italian (evocative of Tuscany, not Sicily) or French (any place name, because French in general sounds romantic to American ears).
Several years ago, I was working with a developer that proposed a “Cartman Drive” for their subdivision. After advising them that about a then-new cartoon called “South Park,” telling them about the character associated with the name, and warning them that the sign might be a frequent target for liberation by the students at the nearby Colorado State University, they changed the name.
A few municipalities have regulations prohibiting names that could easily be turned into something obscene with very simple vandalism. I’ve seen signs for Tucker, Petris, Canal, Grasslands, Coit, and Ball Street as the target of mischevious folk.
Many Americans aren’t aware of the negative connotations of the s-word, so you still see the word incorporated into many street and subdivision names.
I know for a fact that isn’t true… I can name any number of instances where you have the same named streets with different suffixes attached - like Polly Rd, Polly Ln, Polly Ct.
If the post office did this, they must’ve done it VERY recently - like in the past couple of months or so.
In the UK the developer can chose what the streets will be called, if he desires. This has to be later ratified at Council though.
He makes an application (well, his architect does) to Building Control with three name choices in order of preference, and BC will decide which will be accepted.
They base their decision on the suitability of name & on proximity to similar names from which confusion may occur in postal addresses.
As developers generally don’t generally care a toss what the street is called as long as they are making money, I regularly get to pick the names for streets and housing estates.
We have a developer in our area who gets his wife to name the subdivision and the streets.
One of their latest: Avignon/Montrachet (she musta just got back from France).
You should hear the boys in the water dept. trying to pronounce these street names. “Ah’m over on Ver Say Lees Drive ~ or whatever it is”. (Versailles). It would be a lot easier for them if it were in english !
Also here the different developers fight over who can use some names. One subdivision named their community center “bridgewater hall”. Then another guy comes along and calls his whole subdivision “bridgewater”. It can be very confusing.
Talk about vindictive!