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Uncommon Street Name Suffixes

Started by Alex, July 29, 2009, 01:24:27 PM

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Alex

Was thinking about this when looking at my rand earlier. We are all familiar with the standard street name suffixes like Street, Road, Boulevard, Parkway, Freeway, Expressway, Avenue, etc., but occasionally (and perhaps regionally) we will find a different suffix. There was a post the other day that referred to the Norwood Lateral, and on my recent trip to California, I traveled the Sausalito Lateral. How often is that one used? In Kansas they use the suffix Trafficway, and I was reminded in a recent post of OKC's Tinker Diagonal and found a Turner Diagonal in the Kansas City area just now. Then there are the instances where there is no suffix, such as Richmond's "Boulevard". What others are out there?


mightyace

During my time working for the Roadway Express trucking company in the late 80s, one of my coworkers was working on a program to parse addresses.  Therefore, he was looking at suffixes and found a number of oddball things.

However the one that sticks in my mind is "Swing."  Yes, some road somewhere was named "Grapevine Swing!"  :spin:

I know that "Trail" is occasionally used.  US 11-15 between the north end of the Selinsgrove, PA bypass to somewhere south of the PA 61 bridge to Sunbury is "Susquehanna Trail."  Not surprisingly, the remaining part of a previous alignment of US 11-15 is called "Old Trail."

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=selinsgrove,+pa&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=50.557552,114.169922&ie=UTF8&ll=40.834155,-76.833014&spn=0.0119,0.027874&t=h&z=16
My Flickr Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mightyace

I'm out of this F***KING PLACE!

agentsteel53

A friend of mine lives on a Hollow in Austin, TX. 

Here in California we have plenty of examples of Avenida, Camino and Calle as prefixes, not suffixes, because that is how the Spanish language works. 

This leads to a street clearly named by someone who didn't speak Spanish: Camino Road.
live from sunny San Diego.

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jake@aaroads.com

Chris

Oh, they can never think of any good street names in the Netherlands, so they end up picking a suffix, and then open the encyclopedia.

For instance, in my city, the suffix in some neighborhood is "veld" (field). They just simply add all kind of animal types before the suffix, so you'll get street names like "bunny field", "beaver field", "mammoth field", "fox field", "squirrel field" etc.   :paranoid: :-P


agentsteel53

Quote from: Chris on July 29, 2009, 01:47:46 PM
"bunny field", "beaver field", "mammoth field", "fox field", "squirrel field" etc.  

are these all commonly found creatures in the Netherlands?  :ded:
live from sunny San Diego.

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jake@aaroads.com

TheStranger

Quote from: agentsteel53 on July 29, 2009, 01:45:37 PM
A friend of mine lives on a Hollow in Austin, TX. 

Here in California we have plenty of examples of Avenida, Camino and Calle as prefixes, not suffixes, because that is how the Spanish language works. 

This leads to a street clearly named by someone who didn't speak Spanish: Camino Road.

Sacramento's El Camino Avenue has to go in that category as well.  :pan:

In Alberta, "Trail" is rather common too (i.e. Calgary Trail up in Edmonton for part of Highway 2; Deerfoot Trail over in Calgary).
Chris Sampang

Chris

Quote from: agentsteel53 on July 29, 2009, 01:52:02 PM
Quote from: Chris on July 29, 2009, 01:47:46 PM
"bunny field", "beaver field", "mammoth field", "fox field", "squirrel field" etc.  

are these all commonly found creatures in the Netherlands?  :ded:

Yeah, I see mammoths walking by my apartment all the time  :-D

cu2010

I've seen "Run", "Pass", and "Crossing" near Victor, NY. In all three cases, the names involved animals of some sort (I don't recall the exact names of the roads).
This is cu2010, reminding you, help control the ugly sign population, don't have your shields spayed or neutered.

J N Winkler

Some others:

*  Close (very common in Britain and has a specialized meaning in some British cities like Edinburgh)

*  Court

*  Place (typically used in the US to refer to roads which are not squares)

*  Alley

Regarding Spanish-derived street names, there are abbreviations in Spanish which are rarely if ever used in the US, even in natively Spanish-speaking jurisdictions like Puerto Rico.  Americans also don't follow Spanish capitalization, which calls for the generic element of the street name to appear in lowercase only.

In Madrid, calle O'Donnell (named after a nineteenth-century Spanish general and premier of Irish descent) is a major arterial, and appears on signs as "c/ O'Donnell."  On autopista signs in Puerto Rico, it would appear as "Calle O'Donnell."  "Paseo" is sometimes abbreviated "Pº" (using the special superscript "o" available in Spanish).

I don't know if Puerto Rico follows peninsular Spanish address ordering, in which the house number follows the street name (e.g., "Paseo de la Castellana, 67").  I think Mexico does.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

agentsteel53

I've never seen one.  Can you stick one in an envelope and send it to me?
live from sunny San Diego.

http://shields.aaroads.com

jake@aaroads.com

corco


Ian

"Lane" is commonly used. I live on a lane.

-One close to me ends in "Hill". Consort Hill is the name.

-Short streets that end in a circle commonly end in "circle".

-The New York "Thruway" and the New England "Turnpike"

-Has anyone said "turnpike"? Turnpikes seem to be common in the northeast.

-"By-Pass" is the name of a lot of roads that by-pass towns.

-In California, there is the El Camino "Real".

Thats all I know.
UMaine graduate, former PennDOT employee, new SoCal resident.
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agentsteel53

in "El Camino Real", the designator is "Camino", which means road.  It translates to "the royal road".
live from sunny San Diego.

http://shields.aaroads.com

jake@aaroads.com

SSOWorld

even just using "Way" as a suffix.

"Whitney Way"
Scott O.

Not all who wander are lost...
Ah, the open skies, wind at my back, warm sun on my... wait, where the hell am I?!
As a matter of fact, I do own the road.
Raise your what?

Wisconsin - out-multiplexing your state since 1918.

Duke87

#14
There are at least a half dozen streets that end in "Trail" in my town.

Mohawk Trail, Cross Country Trail, Quails Trail, West Trail (no, there isn't an East Trail), Settler's Trail, Fishing Trail, Short Trail, Woody Trail, Mountain Trail... maybe one or two more, but I think that's all of them.

Other, more unique oddballs in town:

- Huckleberry Hollow
- Trumbull Gate
- Pilgrim Walk
- Trinity Pass


And how about Grand Concourse in The Bronx?
If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

Alps

In NY near Albany you have Lower and Upper Letter S.  There are a few Plazas in this area and at least one Crossing (and a Cross or two).

UptownRoadGeek

Rue, Alley & Exchange

Ex:  Rue _______,
      _______ Exchange,
      _______ Alley.

Bryant5493

Ramsey Clos. SW (Atlanta, Ga.)


Be well,

Bryant
Check out my YouTube page (http://youtube.com/Bryant5493). I have numerous road videos of Metro Atlanta and other areas in the Southeast.

I just signed up on photobucket -- here's my page (http://s594.photobucket.com/albums/tt24/Bryant5493).

WillWeaverRVA

"Crescent" is common here, though it is especially prevalent in Virginia Beach.
Will Weaver
WillWeaverRVA Photography | Twitter

"But how will the oxen know where to drown if we renumber the Oregon Trail?" - NE2

SSOWorld

street names without suffixes

Broadway - very common

The Bowery
Scott O.

Not all who wander are lost...
Ah, the open skies, wind at my back, warm sun on my... wait, where the hell am I?!
As a matter of fact, I do own the road.
Raise your what?

Wisconsin - out-multiplexing your state since 1918.

Urban Prairie Schooner

Esplanade (as in Brookhollow Esplanade, in Elmwood LA)
Trail (Woodland Trail, etc.)

A word on suffixes and street naming procedure: Uncommon suffixes are always oddball when you are creating a street name database to be used in GIS and other applications. In theory any reasonable word can act as a suffix. In the city where I live, there is a list of approved suffixes to which you are limited when naming a new street, to keep the street name records consistent. Otherwise your street name suffixes would be all over the place and it would be a complete bear to update the suffix generator in the street database to include them all. There are some other cities that I know of which do the same.

mapman

In Santa Cruz, CA, where I grew up, they use the suffix "Curve" on one street, Bethany Curve.  Most of the streets in that part of town are semi-circular (a couple are even full circles).

In parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, "Common" is a common suffix, mostly in new high-density neighborhoods.

I've also seen two suffixes used for the same street.  Sacramento, CA has 65th Street Expressway.

Scott5114

Quote from: mapman on July 30, 2009, 12:06:50 AM
I've also seen two suffixes used for the same street.  Sacramento, CA has 65th Street Expressway.

Oklahoma City has 36th St Expy.

Kansas City, KS has 18th St Expy and 7th St Trfwy. 18th St Expy is a freeway built on the alignment of 18th Street.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

Sykotyk

http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/abbr_suffix.txt

I'd think the Post Office would be the authority on this topic.

Sykotyk

Chris

Quote from: Master son on July 29, 2009, 11:08:20 PM
street names without suffixes

Broadway - very common


Broadway comes from the Dutch word "breedeweg" (which means Broadway). In Dutch, "breedeweg" is not spelled with a space, so Broadway would technically have been "Broad Way". So "way" is still it's prefix, but written as one word due to the historic influence of the Dutch language.



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