Odonymy in the United Kingdom

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Odonymy refers to the street or road naming conventions in the toponymy of the United Kingdom.

History[edit]

Houndsditch, an example of a street name with no suffix in the City of London

Studied by the English Place-Name Society.

Many towns (particularly in England) will refer to their main thoroughfare as the High Street or Main Street, and many of the ways leading off it will be suffixed "Road".

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.[1]

Culture[edit]

Some older road names that were created in an innocuous or matter-of-fact way, and that were accepted at that time, are nowadays considered rude.[2]

Road numbering[edit]

List[edit]

London[edit]

Statistics[edit]

The top 15 most-common street names are:[3]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Why there's not a single Road in the City of London". The Londonist. 15 August 2012. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
  2. ^ Smith, Oliver (2017-10-03). "Are Britain's rude road names under threat?". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2021-03-26.
  3. ^ "The Most Common Street Names In The UK". The Fact Site. 2009-03-21. Retrieved 2021-03-26.

See also[edit]