Street name

A street name is an identifying name given to a street or road. In toponymic terminology, names of streets and roads are referred to as odonyms or hodonyms (from Ancient Greek ὁδός hodós 'road', and ὄνυμα ónuma 'name', i.e., the Doric and Aeolic form of ὄνομα ónoma 'name'). The street name usually forms part of the address (though addresses in some parts of the world, notably most of Japan, make no reference to street names). Buildings are often given numbers along the street to further help identify them. Odonymy is the study of road names.
Names are often given in a two-part form: an individual name known as the specific, and an indicator of the type of street, known as the generic. Examples are "Main Road", "Fleet Street" and "Park Avenue". The type of street stated, however, can sometimes be misleading: a street named "Park Avenue" need not have the characteristics of an avenue in the generic sense. Some street names have only one element, such as "The Beeches" or "Boulevard". In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common when writing a two-part street name (especially in Britain) to link the two parts with a hyphen and not capitalise the generic (e.g. Broad-street, London-road). This practice has now died out.
A street name can also include a direction (the cardinal points east, west, north, south, or the quadrants NW, NE, SW, SE) especially in cities with a grid-numbering system. Examples include "E Roosevelt Boulevard" and "14th Street NW". These directions are often (though not always) used to differentiate two sections of a street. Other qualifiers may be used for that purpose as well. Examples: upper/lower, old/new, or adding "extension".
"Main Street" and "High Street" are common names for the major street in the middle of a shopping area in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. The most common street name in the US is "2nd" or "Second".
Streets are normally named, and properties on them numbered, by decision of the local authority, which may adopt a detailed policy. For instance the city of Leeds, UK, provides that:
The etymology of a street name is sometimes very obvious, but at other times it might be obscure or even forgotten.
In the United States, most streets are named after numbers, landscapes, trees (a combination of trees and landscapes such as "Oakhill" is used often in residential areas), or the surname of an important individual (in some instances, it is just a commonly held surname such as Smith).
Some streets, such as Elm Street in East Machias, Maine, have been renamed due to features changing. Elm Street's new name, Jacksonville Road, was chosen because it leads to the village of Jacksonville. Its former name was chosen because of elm trees; it was renamed when all of the trees along the street succumbed to Dutch elm disease.
The Shambles, derived from the Anglo-Saxon term fleshammels ("meat shelves" in butchers' stalls), is a historical street name which still exists in various cities and towns around England. The best-known example is in York.
The unusual etymologies of quite a few street names in the United Kingdom are documented in Rude Britain, complete with photographs of local signage.
In the past, many streets were named for the type of commerce or industry found there. This rarely happens in modern times, but many such older names are still common. Examples are London's Haymarket; Barcelona's Carrer de Moles (Millstone Street), where the stonecutters used to have their shops; and Cannery Row in Monterey, California.
Some streets are named for landmarks that were in the street, or nearby, when it was built. Such names are often retained after the landmark disappears.
Barcelona's La Rambla is officially a series of streets. The Rambla de Canaletes is named after a fountain that still stands, but the Rambla dels Estudis is named after the Estudis Generals, a university building demolished in 1843, and the Rambla de Sant Josep, the Rambla dels Caputxins, and the Rambla de Santa Monica are each named after former convents. Only the convent of Santa Monica survives as a building, and it has been converted to a museum.
London's Crystal Palace Parade takes its name from a former exhibition centre that stood adjacent to it, destroyed by fire in 1936.
Sometimes a street is named after a landmark that was destroyed to build that very street. For example, New York's Canal Street takes its name from a canal that was filled in to build it. New Orleans' Canal Street was named for the canal that was to be built in its right-of-way.
While names such as Long Road or Nine Mile Ride have an obvious meaning, some road names' etymologies are less clear. The various Stone Streets, for example, were named at a time when the art of building paved (stone) Roman roads had been lost. The main road through Old Windsor, UK, is called "Straight Road", and it is straight where it carries that name. Many streets with regular nouns rather than proper nouns, are somehow related to that noun. For example, Station Street or Station Road, do connect to a railway station, and many "Railway Streets" or similar do end at, cross or parallel a railway.
Many roads are given the name of the place to which they lead, while others bear the names of distant, seemingly unrelated cities.
As a road approaches its stated destination, its name may be changed. Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield, Connecticut, becomes Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, for example. A road can switch names multiple times as local opinion changes regarding its destination: for example, the road between Oxford and Banbury changes name five times from the Banbury Road to the Oxford Road and back again as it passes through villages.
Some streets are named after the areas that the street connects. For example, Clarcona Ocoee Road links the communities of Clarcona and Ocoee in Orlando, Florida, and Jindivick–Neerim South Road links the towns of Jindivick and Neerim South in Victoria, Australia.
Some roads are named after their general direction, such as "Great North Road".
Bypasses are often named after the town they route traffic around, for example the Newbury bypass.
Some streets are named after famous or distinguished individuals, sometimes people directly associated with the street, usually after their deaths. Bucharest's Şoseaua Kiseleff was named after the Russian reformer Pavel Kiselyov who had the road built while Russian troops were occupying the city in the 1830s; its Strada Dr. Iuliu Barasch is named after a locally famous physician whose clinic was located there. Many streets named after saints are named because they lead to, or are adjacent to, churches dedicated to them.
Naming a street after oneself as a bid for immortality has a long pedigree: Jermyn Street in London was named by Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans, who developed the St. James's area for Charles II of England. Perhaps to dissuade such posterity-seeking, many jurisdictions only allow naming for persons after their death, occasionally with a waiting period of ten years or more. A dozen streets in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood were renamed in 1988 after deceased local writers; in 1994, the city broke with tradition, honoring Lawrence Ferlinghetti by renaming an alley after the poet within his own lifetime.
Naming a street for a person is very common in many countries, often in the honorand's birthplace. However, it is also the most controversial type of naming, especially in cases of renaming. Two main reasons streets are renamed are: (1) to commemorate a person who lived or worked in that area (for example, Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris, where he resided); or (2) to associate a prominent street in a city after an admired major historical figure even with no specific connection to the locale (for example, René Lévesque Boulevard in Montreal, formerly Dorchester Boulevard). Similarly, hundreds of roads in the United States were named with variations of Martin Luther King Jr., in the years after his 1968 assassination.
Conversely, renaming can be a way to eliminate a name that proves too controversial. For example, Hamburg Avenue in Brooklyn, New York became Wilson Avenue after the United States entered World War I against Germany (see below). In Riverside, California, a short, one-way street named Wong Way was renamed to a more respectful Wong Street, as well as spelled out in Chinese characters to honor the historical Chinatown that once occupied the area.
In a case of a street named after a living person becoming controversial, Lech Wałęsa Street in San Francisco was renamed to Dr. Tom Waddell Place in 2014 after Wałęsa made a public remark against gay people holding major public office.
There are public benefits to having easily understood systems of orderly street names, such as in sequences:
A 1950 American Planning Association report supports use of these systems.
Groups of streets in one area are sometimes named using a particular theme. One example is Philadelphia, where the major east–west streets in William Penn's original plan for the city carry the names of trees: from north to south, these were Vine, Sassafras, Mulberry, High (not a tree), Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine, Lombard and Cedar. (Sassafras, Mulberry, High and Cedar have since been renamed to Race, Arch, Market [the main east–west street downtown] and South.)
Other examples of themed streets:
In many cities laid out on a grid plan, the streets are named to indicate their location on a Cartesian coordinate plane. For example, the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 for Manhattan provided for numbered streets running parallel to the minor axis of the island and numbered and lettered avenues running parallel to the long axis of the island, although many of the avenues have since been assigned names for at least part of their courses.
In the city plan for Washington, D.C., north–south streets were numbered away from the United States Capitol in both directions, while east–west streets were lettered away from the Capitol in both directions and diagonal streets were named after various States of the Union. As the city grew, east–west streets past W Street were given two-syllable names in alphabetical order, then three-syllable names in alphabetical order, and finally names relating to flowers and shrubs in alphabetical order. Even in communities not laid out on a grid, such as Arlington County, Virginia, a grid-based naming system is still sometimes used.
Often, the numbered streets run east–west and the numbered avenues north–south, following the style adopted in Manhattan, although this is not always observed. In some cases, streets in "half-blocks" in between two consecutive numbered streets have a different designator, such as Court or Terrace, often in an organized system where courts are always between streets and terraces between avenues. Sometimes yet another designator (such as "Way", "Place", or "Circle") is used for streets which go at a diagonal or curve around, and hence do not fit easily in the grid.
In many cases, the block numbers correspond to the numbered cross streets; for instance, an address of 1600 may be near 16th Street or 16th Avenue. In a city with both lettered and numbered streets, such as Washington, D.C., the 400 block may be between 4th and 5th streets or between D and E streets, depending on the direction in which the street in question runs. However, addresses in Manhattan have no obvious relationship to cross streets or avenues, although various tables and formulas are often found on maps and travel guides to assist in finding addresses.
Examples of grid systems:
In languages that have grammatical cases, the specific part of a road name is typically in the possessive or genitive case, meaning "the road of [Name]". Where the specific is an adjective (as in "High Street"), however, it is inflected to match the generic.
Street names are usually renamed after political revolutions and regime changes for ideological reasons. In postsocialist Romania, after 1989, the percentage of street renaming ranged from 6% in Bucharest, and 8% in Sibiu, to 26% in Timișoara.
Street names can be changed relatively easily by municipal authorities for various reasons. Sometimes streets are renamed to reflect a changing or previously unrecognized ethnic community or to honour politicians or local heroes. In towns such as Geneva, Brussels, Namur and Poznań initiatives have recently been taken to name or rename more streets and other public spaces after women.
A changed political regime can trigger widespread changes in street names – many place names in Zimbabwe changed following their independence in 1980, with streets named after British colonists being changed to those of Zimbabwean nationalist leaders. After Ukraine's pro-Western revolution in 2014, a street named after Patrice Lumumba in Kyiv was renamed the street of John Paul II.
In Portugal, both the Republican Revolution in 1910 and the Carnation Revolution in 1974 triggered widespread changes in street names to replace references to the deposed regimes (the Monarchy and Estado Novo respectively) with references to the revolutions themselves, as well as to figures and concepts associated with them.
In response to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, Israel renamed streets called "UN Avenue" in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv to "Zionism Avenue".
Some international causes célèbres can attract cities around the world to rename streets in solidarity; for example a number of streets with South African embassies were renamed honouring Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment.
Street names can also be changed to avoid negative associations, like Malbone Street in Brooklyn, New York City, renamed Empire Boulevard after the deadly Malbone Street Wreck; Cadieux Street in Montreal renamed De Bullion because the original name became infamous by the former presence of many bordellos; and several streets in the German Village area of Columbus, Ohio which were renamed with more "American" sounding names around World War I due to popular anti-German sentiments. Similarly, Hamburg Avenue in Brooklyn was renamed Wilson Avenue during World War I.
Street names also can change due to a change in official language. After the death of Francisco Franco, the Spanish transition to democracy gave Catalonia the status of an autonomous community, with Catalan as a co-official language. While some street names in Catalonia were changed entirely, most were merely given the Catalan translations of their previous Castilian names; for example, Calle San Pablo (Saint Paul Street) in Barcelona became Carrer Sant Pau. In most cases, this was a reversion to Catalan names from decades earlier, before the beginning of the Franco dictatorship in 1939.
In a similar way, English street names were changed to French in Quebec during the 1970s, after French was declared the sole language for outdoor signage. This was met with hurt and anger by many of the province's Anglophones, who wished to retain their traditional placenames. The government body responsible for overseeing the enacting of the Charter of the French Language continues to press English-majority communities to further gallicise (francize) their street names (for example, what was once "Lakeshore Road" was changed to "Chemin Lakeshore" in the 1970s, with the Office québécois de la langue française pressuring a further change to "Chemin du Bord-du-Lac", completely calquing the English name into French).
Sometimes, when communities are consolidated, the streets are renamed according to a uniform system. For example, when Georgetown became part of Washington, D.C., the streets in Georgetown were renamed as an extension of Washington's street-naming convention. Also, when leaders of Arlington County, Virginia, asked the United States Post Office Department to place the entire county in the "Arlington, Virginia" postal area, the Post Office refused to do so until the county adopted a uniform addressing and street-naming system, which the county did in 1932.
In 1906, Cleveland, Ohio renamed streets to a numbered system. For an example Erie Street became East 9th Street, Bond Street became East 6th Street, and so forth. In Cleveland and its suburbs, all north–south streets are numbered from Cleveland's Public Square and east–west streets are numbered from the northernmost point in Cuyahoga County, which is in the City of Euclid. Bedford, Berea, and Chagrin Falls do not adhere to the grid rules of Cleveland. After World War I, Cleveland renamed a numbered street to Liberty Boulevard, to commemorate Cleveland area soldiers who had been killed in the Great War; in 1981, this street was renamed to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
In the New York City borough of Queens, a huge street renaming campaign began in the early 20th century, changing almost all of the street names into numbers, in accordance with the adoption of a new unified house numbering scheme. Some New York City Subway stations retained their names, instead of changing with their corresponding street(s). A few examples survive today, such as 33rd Street–Rawson Street station.
Sometimes street renaming can be controversial, because of antipathy toward the new name, the overturning of a respected traditional name, or confusion from the altering of a familiar name useful in navigation. A proposal in 2005 to rename 16th Street, N.W., in Washington, D.C., "Ronald Reagan Boulevard" exemplified all three. Issues of familiarity and confusion can be addressed by the street sign showing the current name and, in smaller writing, the old name. One compromise when the issue is more political can be "co-naming", when the old name is fully retained but the street is also given a second subsidiary name, which may be indicated by a smaller sign underneath the 'main' name. (See section below on "Multiple names for a single street".)
It is also controversial because it is seen by many as a way to rewrite history, even if the original name is not well-liked but nevertheless traditional or convenient. It can be used to erase the presence of a cultural group or previous political regime, whether positive or negative, and to show the supremacy of a new cultural group or political regime. A prime example of this type of name change was the renaming of Montreal's Dorchester Boulevard, the nexus of the financial and business district, named for governor Lord Dorchester, to René Lévesque Boulevard, after a French-language reformist premier of Quebec. City officials rushed the name change, without waiting the required one-year mourning period after Lévesque's death. Many Anglophones were outspoken in their opposition to the name change, and the majority English-speaking city of Westmount retained Dorchester as the name of their portion of the street in protest.
Another example is that of a street in Paris called Rue de Saint-Pétersbourg[1]; the street's name was changed to Rue de Pétrograd after the eponymous Russian city changed its name in 1914. The Parisian street had its name changed again to Rue de Léningrad in 1945, shortly after the liberation of Paris, and reverted to its original name after the fall of the Soviet regime in Russia in 1991.
After most of Ireland became independent as the Irish Free State in 1922, many streets had their names changed, with the names of English monarchs, nobility and administrators replaced with Irish patriots. Dublin's main thoroughfare was known as Sackville Street (named after Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset), becoming O'Connell Street in 1924. Similarly, Limerick's George's Street (named after George III) was renamed O'Connell Street. Great Britain Street, Dublin became Parnell Street (after Charles Stewart Parnell). Limerick's Brunswick Street (named after the House of Brunswick) became Sarsfield Street. Cork's George's Street (after George I) became Oliver Plunkett Street, after the Catholic martyr Oliver Plunkett.
Many streets with royal and colonial names still remain in the Republic of Ireland, and local councils occasionally debate their removal. In 2019, Cork City Councillor Diarmaid Ó Cadhla painted over the name of "Victoria Road" and several others, and was charged with criminal damage. He said that there were "about 80 or 90 streets named after criminals and aristocrats in our city, and in Victoria’s case a genocidal queen responsible for the murder and displacement of two million Irish people," referring to the Great Famine.
While it is very common for what is effectively a single street to have different names for different portions of the street, it is less common for a portion of a street to have two equally acceptable legal names. There are several cases of the latter in New York City: Sixth Avenue in Manhattan was renamed as Avenue of the Americas in 1945, but the name never really stuck; the city now considers both names equally acceptable, and both appear on street signs. Manhattan street signs now also designate a portion of Seventh Avenue as Fashion Avenue, and Avenue C is also Loisaida Avenue, from a Spanglish pronunciation of Lower East Side.
Cairo's Muizz Li-Din Allah Street changes its name as one walks through. It may variously be referred to by locals as Souq Al-Nahhasin ("Coppersmith Bazaar") or Souq Al-Attarin ("Spices Bazaar") or Souq Al-Sagha ("Goldsmith and Jeweler Bazaar"), according to historical uses, as in "Type of commerce or industry" above. (For a tourist, that might be misleading. These Cairene names identify both a "segment" within the street, and "sub-areas" in the city.)
Some major roads may have two names of different types, such as the Hume Highway/Sydney Road in outer northern Melbourne, which is exclusively Sydney Road closer to the city and exclusively the Hume Highway outside Melbourne, or the Hoddle Highway which is better known as Hoddle Street north of Bridge Road and Punt Road south of it.
Where a street crosses or forms (straddles) a boundary, its two sides sometimes have different names. Examples include Seton Avenue (Bronx) / Mundy Lane (Mount Vernon, New York); Station Road (Portslade) / Boundary Road (Hove, East Sussex); Lackman Road (Lenexa) / Black Bob Road (Olathe, Kansas). In London, the change mid-building from Parliament Street to Whitehall marks a palace which burnt down in 1688.
Streets can have multiple names because of multilingualism. Streets in Brussels often have a Dutch name and a French name, both languages being official: for example "Bergstraat" (Dutch) and "Rue de la Montagne" (French), both meaning "Mountain Street". While the older streets were originally named in Dutch and calqued into French, some more recent ones, conceived in French, have been calqued into Dutch. For instance Boulevard Charlemagne was retranslated from Karlemagnelaan to Karel de Grotelaan, and Rue du Beau Site in Ixelles from the literal Schoonzichtstraat to the more idiomatic Welgelegenstraat.
Occasionally there is confusion over which is the best translation, as is the case with the Chaussée de Waterloo in St-Gilles, Brussels, which is variously rendered as Waterlosesteenweg and Waterloosesteenweg. Similarly, the name may change when the street lies on or across a border between areas with different languages: Nieuwstraat (Kerkrade, Netherlands) / Neustraße (Herzogenrath, Germany), both names meaning "New Street".
In Zaandam, Netherlands, streets in the Russiche Buurt (Russian Neighbourhood) are named after Russians, commemorating Tsar Peter I's visit in 1697. These are named bilingually, for instance Tolstoistraat/Улица Толстого.
In many cases, more than one street in a locality will have the same name: for example, Bordesley Green and Bordesley Green Road, both in the Bordesley Green section of Birmingham, England, and the fifteen separate Abbey Roads in London. The city of Boston has five Washington Streets. Atlanta famously has many streets that share the name Peachtree: Peachtree Street, Drive, Plaza, Circle, Way, Walk, and many other variations that include "Peachtree" in the name, such as West Peachtree Street.
Occasionally, these streets intersect each other, as with Pike Place and Pike Street, and Ravenna Boulevard and Ravenna Avenue in Seattle, Washington. Kansas City, Missouri, has a Gillham Road, Gillham Street, and Gillham Plaza all running parallel to each other. In many cities in Alberta, new developments have only a few common street names, which are followed by variant types such as Boulevard, Drive, Crescent and Place.
The Philadelphia Main Line of Philadelphia, near Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, contain a number of roads named Gulph, including Gulph Road, Upper Gulph Road, New Gulph Road, Old Gulph Road, Gulph Creek Road, Gulph Creek Drive, Gulph Lane, Gulph Hills Road, North Gulph Road, and South Gulph Road. In some cases, these roads intersect each other multiple times, creating confusion for those unfamiliar with the local geography.
Some cities such as Fresno, California use the same street name and suffix (street, ave, road, etc.) for several stretches of road. As a rule, these streets are usually in direct line with each other, but with a several block break in between sections. The breaks are usually caused by limited access (one or two entrance) housing subdivisions, or other multi block land uses (schools, parks, industrial plants, and even farm fields in the outskirts of towns). For example, a street may end in the 500 block and restart in the 900 block. Thus there will be no addresses in the 600, 700 or 800 block. St. Clair Avenue in Toronto is an example of this.
Roads between cities, and especially highways, are rarely named; they are often numbered instead, but in Graan voor Visch, a district of Hoofddorp, streets have no names. The houses there are instead uniquely numbered with very high numbers, starting with 13000.
In the central district of Mannheim (Germany), it is the blocks which are numbered rather than the streets.
In Costa Rica, most streets do not have names or signs, and directions are given based on landmarks and by blocks, which are counted as 100 meters, regardless of the block's actual size.
Some streets are known equally or better by a name other than their official name.
Seattle's University Way NE is almost universally known to locals as "The Ave". Buffalo, New York's Delaware Avenue acquired the nickname of "Presidents Avenue", being where Millard Fillmore lived, William McKinley died, and Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president. The best-known segment of South Las Vegas Boulevard is called the Las Vegas Strip, or just "The Strip".
It is also common in some places to shorten the official name of streets which have long names. For example, many streets named for Massachusetts are often referred to as "Mass Ave"; Boston's Commonwealth Avenue is often called "Comm Ave"; Manhattan's Lexington Avenue is often simply called "Lex" and Madison Avenue, "Mad"; Charlottesville, Virginia's Jefferson Park Avenue is simply "JPA"; in Williamsburg, Virginia, Duke of Gloucester Street is often referred to as "DOG Street".
In Chicago, Lake Shore Drive is commonly abbreviated to "LSD". In Portland, Oregon, the Martin Luther King, Junior Boulevard is abbreviated to "MLK Jr. Blvd.", while people in Chicago often refer to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive as "King Drive". Oregonians, when referring to the Tualatin Valley Highway west of Portland, often say and write "TV Highway". In Toronto, the Don Valley Parkway is commonly referred to as the "DVP" (and jocularly the Don Valley Parking Lot due to high congestion).
In Columbus, Ohio, Chittenden Avenue near Ohio State University is often informally referred to as "Chit", reflected in local event names such as "ChitShow" and "ChitFest". In rare cases, highway numbers may be used as shorthand for streets that have (or once had) such a designation. An example of this form of shortening is the common reference of Hurontario Street in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, as "Highway 10".
In Paris, Boulevard Saint-Michel is affectionately known as "Boul'Mich". North Michigan Avenue, Chicago's most famous shopping street, is also occasionally referred to by that name, but is more commonly called the Magnificent Mile.
In Berlin, Kurfürstendamm is also well known as Ku-Damm, while Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße, a highway formerly used as a race track, is normally shortened to "AVUS".
Some street names in large cities can become metonyms, and stand for whole types of businesses or ways of life. "Fleet Street" in London still represents the British press, and "Wall Street" in New York City stands for American finance, though the former does not serve its respective industry any more. Also, if a theatrical performance makes it to "Broadway" it is supposed to be a very good show. "Broadway" represents the 41 professional theaters with 500 or more seats located in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
In London, a top surgeon with a private practice is liable to be referred to as a Harley Street surgeon even if she or he does not actually maintain an office in Harley Street. Also Savile Row is a world-known metonym for a good tailor, while Jermyn Street is associated with high-quality shirtmaking. The cachet of streets like Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue can prove effective branding, as for the Buick Park Avenue luxury car, and Saks Department Store being always known as "Saks Fifth Avenue". In the opposite way, 42nd Street still carries connotations of pleasure, but also sin and decadence. Like Wall Street, Toronto's Bay Street represented Canadian finance and still serves it today.
Much as streets are often named after the neighborhoods they run through, the reverse process also takes place, with a neighborhood taking its name from a street or an intersection: for example, Wall Street in Manhattan, Knightsbridge in London, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, and Jane and Finch in Toronto.
Streets can be divided into various types, each with its own general style of construction and purpose. However, the difference between streets, roads, avenues and the like is often blurred and is not a good indicator of the size, design, or content of the area. Many transportation facilities have a suffix which designates it a "street", "road", "court", etc., and these designations may or may not have any meaning or pattern in the particular jurisdiction.
In the United Kingdom many towns will refer to their main thoroughfare as the High Street, and many of the ways leading off it will be suffixed "Road".
In some other English-speaking countries, such as New Zealand and Australia, cities are often divided by a main "Road", with "Streets" leading from this "Road", or are divided by thoroughfares known either as "Streets" or "Roads", with no apparent differentiation between the two. In Auckland, for example, the main shopping precinct is around Queen Street and Karangahape Road, and the main urban thoroughfare connecting the south of the city to the city centre is Dominion Road.
In the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, some streets are called parades. A parade is a public promenade or roadway with good pedestrian facilities along the side. Examples: Peace Celebration Parade, Marine Parade, King Edward Parade, Oriental Parade and dozens more. However, this term is not used in North America (with the exception of Marine Parade in Santa Cruz, California).
In the City of London, according to tradition, there are no "Roads"; all the streets there are called "Street", "Lane", "Court", "Hill", "Row" or "Alley", or have no suffix (e.g. Cheapside). However, since 1994, part of Goswell Road now lies in the City of London, making this a unique anomaly.
In Manhattan, Portland and the south side of Minneapolis, east–west streets are "Streets", whereas north–south streets are "Avenues". Yet in St. Petersburg, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee, all of the east–west streets are "Avenues" and the north–south streets are "Streets" (Memphis has one exception—the historic Beale Street runs east–west). On the north and northeast side of Minneapolis, the street grids vary.
In North Minneapolis, numbered avenues run east–west (33rd Avenue N) and numbered streets run north–south (6th Street N) but named avenues run north–south (Washburn Avenue N). In Northeast Minneapolis, avenues run east–west (15th Avenue NE) and streets run north–south (Taylor Street NE), except for the major east–west artery Broadway Street and the major north–south avenues Central and University.
In rural Ontario, numbered concession roads form grids oriented to lakes and rivers. Usually each axis of the grid has its own suffix, for example, "Roads" for east–west roads and "Lines" for north–south roads. Some townships have roads with two numbers, e.g. "15/16 Sideroad", which refer to the lot numbers on both sides of the roads.
On sprawling military reservations with tank schools such as Fort Knox Military Reservation and Fort Benning there are dedicated "Tank Roads" and "Cut-offs".
In Montreal, "avenue" (used for major streets in other cities) generally indicates a small, tree-lined, low-traffic residential street. Exceptions exist, such as Park Avenue and Pine Avenue. Both are major thoroughfares in the city.
In older British cities, names such as "vale", normally associated with smaller roads, may become attached to major thoroughfares as roads are upgraded (e.g. Roehampton Vale in London).
In the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a trend to not use the street type suffix at all, resulting in street names like "North Sea" and "Tuba" (translated).
In some cities in the United States (San Francisco, Houston, Detroit, Cleveland, and Memphis), streets do have official suffixes, but they are not generally given on street signs or used in postal addresses. San Francisco's streets have unique names throughout the city (except on military forts). There was an effort in 1909 in San Francisco by the mayor-appointed Commission on Change of Street Names to rename duplicate and confusable names, with over 250 street names altered.
Street type designations include:
Some major roads, particularly motorways and freeways, are given road numbers rather than, or in addition to, names. Examples include the E5, M1 and Interstate 5. Many roads in Britain are numbered as part of the Great Britain road numbering scheme, and the same applies in many other countries. The same is also common in the United States; for example, in Washington, D.C., much of New York Avenue is U.S. Route 50. In York Region, Ontario, the former provincial Highway 7 (currently signed as York Regional Road 7) is still referred to as Highway 7 on road signs and in everyday use, even though the road has not been part of Ontario's provincial highway system since 1998.
In the western United States, parts of the old U.S. Route 99 were taken over and added into the respective states' highway system and numbered "99" in the 3 states that the U.S. Route use to run through California, Oregon, and Washington. This is true for several other historic U.S. Routes, such as Route 66.
The opposite is true in Las Vegas, Nevada. The western loop of the Bruce Woodbury Beltway (between the two Interstate 15 connectors) have been numbered Clark County Route 215. This is in anticipation of the route being renumbered Interstate 215
Some jurisdictions may use internal numbers to track county or city roads which display no number on signs.
In most cities, attempts were made to match addresses with the areas between numbered street. For example, addresses on Main street, between 3rd and 4th street would be in the 300's
Most streets have a street name sign or nameplate at each intersection to indicate the name of the road. The design and style of the sign is usually common to the district in which it appears. The sign has the street name and sometimes other information, such as the block number and/or its community, and any highway designation. Such signs are often the target of simple vandalism, and signs on unusually or famously named streets are especially liable to street sign theft.
Usually, the colour scheme used on the sign just reflects the local standard (white on a green background in many U.S. jurisdictions, for example). However, in some cases, the colour of a sign can provide information, as well. One example can be found in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Within city limits, all major arterial roads use a blue sign, north–south roads use a green sign, and east–west roads use a brown sign. In New York, historical districts use white lettering on brown signs. Other places sometimes use blue or white signs to indicate private roads.
The most common street names in the United States, as of 1993, are:
The reason for "Second" and "Third" streets being more common than "First" is that some cities do not have "First" streets — naming them "Main" or "Front" (in communities with river, lake or railroad line frontage) instead, or renaming them after historical figures.