S19: Toponymical Planning
 
 
3) II) Ordering geogr. space - F) Urban street naming  


In the development of street names in towns and cities those in charge of naming try to effectuate the following:

  • Optimal differentiation between different names, so that no confusion occurs when someone states his home address. Sunda, Sumba and Sumbawa are three Indonesian toponyms that are often used in the Netherlands (the former colonial power in Indonesia) for street names, but never in the same town, as it would be difficult for Dutch ears to distinguish between them.
    For instance: The Fire Brigade logged a fire alarm erroneously as occurring in the Van Durenstreet instead of the Van Burenstreet; by the time they had arrived from the first at the correct second address, the building already was damaged beyond repair.

  • Preferably when hearing a street name, the public should be able to write it correctly, so there should not be big discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation.

  • Preferably, when hearing a street name the inhabitants of the same town or city should have a general idea of the neighbourhood where that street is located. This can be realised by assigning street names in clusters of the same type: clusters of streets named after different flowers, different tree species, after painters or composers, statesmen or resistance fighters, rivers or world cities, etc. By being familiar with the general location of each of these clusters of streets named after a specific type of object, navigation within a town or city will be improved.


Streets named after componists in Utrecht, the Netherlands

On the above map one may discern clusters of streets named for authors/poets: (Dante, Petraca, Schiller,Byron, Goethe, Racine, La Fontaine, Grimm, Victor Hugo, Dickens), composers (Bela Bartok, Vivaldi, Liszt, Ravel, Verdi, Schonberg, Delius, Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Händel, Mahler, Chopin, Von Weber, Joseph Haydn, Palestrina, Johan Winnubst), and with Indonesian toponyms (Malakka, Billiton, Banka) and Dutch empire builders (L.Reaal, Van Diemen, Daendels, Abel Tasman, Van den Bosch)).

 
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Copyright United Nations Statistics Division and International Cartographic Association, July 2012