Help me name some city streets! :D

October 3, 2018 2:37 PM

I am designing a housing development and I might get to name the streets! I need 3-7 street names (it will depend on if the city wants one street to be considered a loop or different streets). I am looking for some additional ideas for street names! In particular, if anyone knows names from Hispanic mythology that would be cool/appropriate to use, that would be awesome.

So many places get built and have boring street names, and then i realized, hey!, i am designing a housing development! I can give the streets good names! I want to make sure the names are awesome, so i am turning to my friends and you guys for suggestions! Name types i'm currently considering/looking for help with:

1) fun/funny/weird names (but ones people wouldn't be embarrassed by; ones that would hopefully make them smile prefered!)
2) names that just sound cool or have an interesting meaning
3) figures from Hispanic mythology. I was leaning towards Greek goddesses (Athena, Artemis, etc), or the Greek Muses until i remembered that this is a largely Hispanic area. I think it would probably be cooler to name the streets after figures in Hispanic mythology. That is not an area i know a lot about, so if anyone has ideas of figures please let me know! I admit i would prefer female figures, but i will consider anyone :)


Names don't have to fit in those categories. Names dont have to relate to each other, but it could be interesting if they did. A brief explanation would be appreciated (like, "Athena = goddess of wisdom"), but I'll still research the suggestions to make sure they would be appropriate. If you are using a weird name from a town or another street or something, let me know; that might count as "precedent" and help its approval from the city. Please remember there will be real people living here!

One big thing to remember is the names will have to pass city planning!

ps. Thanks ahead of time for suggestions! If this works out i will let you guys know (although it might be a few years before i can update).

posted by miss so and so to Society & Culture (26 answers total)

Best answer: What about naming some of the streets after respected local community leaders?
posted by acidnova at 2:43 PM on October 3, 2018 [18 favorites]

Find out the original owners of the land and name streets after them, or local post offices/hamlets etc. Usually the only connection to Local History is street names.

Find the local Tribes/Nations that owned the land and name streets after people/mythology/creation important to them (ideally in their language).

Be careful with the assumption of the ethnicity of who will live there. There is a housing development I am familiar with that is almost entirely named after Saints/prominent local Catholic Italians/Catholic stuff, expecting the wealthy local Catholic would move in. Instead, the community is probably 90% Hindu, lol.

Hyper-local flora and fauna, if you have any.

Maybe instead of Hispanic names, use local names but with the Spanish version of “road”, “street”, “crescent”, etc at the end

Is there an existing community you can involve; such as a class from a local school for ideas. Can you have a contest for homebuyers “name your street” and have them vote? It gives people ownership over their community.

This is a fun project!
posted by saucysault at 2:58 PM on October 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Hispanic Mythology." Do you mean the mythology of native American peoples like the Aztec and Inca? These are not Hispanic. On the other hand, I'm not sure the mythology of Spain will have all that much resonance. However, if you meant the former, I suggest "Tonatiuh", the Turquoise God, whose name is shorter and easier to pronounce than most of the others. If you meant the latter, "Duende" might be nice.
posted by ubiquity at 3:00 PM on October 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Here is a list of Mayan gods & goddesses. And a list of Aztec ones.

But I also like the idea of going with Latinx/Hispanic/Chicanx figures from history. Dolores Huerta Boulevard anyone?
posted by brookeb at 3:02 PM on October 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Hyper-local flora and fauna, if you have any.

FYI we make fun of a nearby development that uses a scheme like this because the habitat needed by the local flora and fauna was destroyed by the development.
posted by rtha at 3:02 PM on October 3, 2018 [24 favorites]

Best answer: You know what I look for in a street? Something I don't have to spell every. single. time. I have to give my street name. If I do have to spell it - I don't want it to be a long name.

I wouldn't make them TOO unusal.

If you are leaning towards Hispanic to nod to the Hispanic history or residents I like the idea of some traditional street names in Spanish.

A few super common ones:

Cedar St - Cedro St
Elm St - Olmo St
Pine St - Pino St
First Av - Primero Ave
posted by beccaj at 3:11 PM on October 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I suggest finding the names of Latinx artists and writers and naming the streets after them. In the U.S, we have a dearth of streets named after famous artists, so this is your chance to rectify that. How cool would it be to live on Rivera street or Kahlo place or Allende Avenue?
posted by Atrahasis at 3:13 PM on October 3, 2018 [17 favorites]

Name the streets after Iberian tribes.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:13 PM on October 3, 2018

Response by poster: Wow, i think Atrahasis's suggestion of Latinx artists and writers is perfect. I will also look into indigenous peoples' artists and writers. I still would love any suggestions, though! :) Thanks guys!



ps, To clear up a couple of things, I assume the residents will be largely hispanic bc of current demographics. By "Hispanic mythology" i meant the mythology from what are now Hispanic communities in the Americas, but really from any time period pre or post colonialism. "Mythology" is meant to be as widely interpreted as possible (i.e. to include actual historical figures as well as those that may or may not be real).
posted by miss so and so at 4:03 PM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

The streets in the development I grew up in are named after small towns and villages in England - you could do the same with Mexico or other countries?
posted by airplant at 4:27 PM on October 3, 2018

Best answer: Don’t forget to make them easy to pronounce and spell! I live on a street that is easy to read, but it has an apostrophe in it, which is a PITA on the phone and on some electronic forms.

I was in line next to someone the other day who told the clerk her address on Sabertooth Ct. That sounded pretty cool, and apparently her whole neighborhood is prehistoric stuff.
posted by juliapangolin at 6:17 PM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

* Friendly Street is in Raleigh, N.C.
* Shangri La Court is in Albuquerque, N.M.

You can find a good crop of "unusual street name" through Google.
posted by maurreen at 6:53 PM on October 3, 2018

Do you also get to choose the street name endings? street, avenue, way etc? Is there a way to add to the story with good endings? I ask as a subdivision I worked on was going have endings that didn't make the most of the street shapes/layout so I changed them all to more sensible names that told more of what we were intending for the project.
posted by unearthed at 7:01 PM on October 3, 2018

Fun!
If there is a way to find resources for it, could you put together the first ever Naming Commitee for whatever location you’re in? I can’t imagine not having one.

In the absence of a formal naming committee, it might be fun to share the fun, round up a few nearby stakeholders, offer pizza and float suggestions?

Speaking from experience here, I see a LOT of new housing development names. The best ones are what’s already been said above: have local resonance, but also easy to spell & pronounce (by humans and gps), short, and not mistakable for anything else similar nearby.

Play on Google Earth if you haven’t already!
posted by OlivesAndTurkishCoffee at 7:20 PM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Don’t forget to make them easy to pronounce and spell! I live on a street that is easy to read, but it has an apostrophe in it, which is a PITA on the phone and on some electronic forms.

Yeah, my street name has a "ph" in it, where "p" is the end of one syllable and "h" is the beginning of the next, so they have separate "p" and "h" sounds (as in "flophouse."). However, the voice on GPS pronounces the "ph" as "f" (as in "flofhouse").
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:32 PM on October 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Please choose names that are easy to spell and not likely to be confused with other words. Quetzalcoatl would not be a good choice. No one wants to live on Tequila Lane.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:41 PM on October 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I live in a place now with deity names and used to live in a development with Spanish names. Nth'ing the advice to make it reasonable to spell and pronounce (which is a regional thing I know) and not too long.
posted by fshgrl at 7:55 PM on October 3, 2018

Just popping in to say that you are living my dream! Enjoy!
posted by carmicha at 8:34 PM on October 3, 2018

Best answer: Where are the residents from? I'm not sure if people from Puerto Rico will have any attachment to Mayan gods, for example.
However, what if you just use common Spanish first names for streets. People are always pleased and kind of excited to live on or near a street with their own or their loved one's name. Kids especially. Here is a list of the most common Hispanic baby names for 2011. https://www.babycenter.com/0_100-most-popular-hispanic-baby-names-of-2011_10363639.bc
posted by nantucket at 9:04 PM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I know you mean well so this isn't intended as a personal slight, just something to consider: Is this a largely Hispanic area as in Hispanic across all demographics? What kind of housing is actually being built here? There's kind of this... phenomenon of housing developments winding up with names that are culturally relevant to some culture or another but the actual residents of those developments being almost entirely white, and it's kind of uncomfortable to me as the sort of person of Mexican-American descent who grew up super poor and even after getting super lucky with my career can't afford to live in newer housing.
posted by Sequence at 10:50 PM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Streety McStreetface.

(Sorry.)
posted by Desertshore at 1:11 AM on October 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: My favorite subdivision street name theme is in Dunedin, Florida, where they are all named after people who were on the Challenger space shuttle when it exploded. (Uh, OK, it doesn't sound fun when I say that, but it is unique and interesting otherwise.) See Challenger Drive up the middle and then the astronauts' names on either side (Resnik, Scobee, MacAuliffe, Onizuka, Jarvis, Smith, McNair).

You could do something similar like this list of 7 U.S. Women Who Made History at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.

Taxonomic Rank? Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species

Three orders of amphibians? Anura (frogs and toads), Urodela (salamanders) and Apoda (the caecilians), which then expands to 7 if you use all seven words (Anura, Frog, Toad, Urodela, Salamander, Apoda, Caecilian).
posted by jillithd at 7:08 AM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Group them is my opinion, so they form a cohesive neighborhood identity.
Examples would be 'robin lane, bluebird road, ' - becomes the 'Bird streets'.

Rally Road, Riverside, Regal - become the 'R Streets'.

Don't name them randomly -one greek goddess, one president, one state, one tree. Pick one group and stick with it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:43 AM on October 4, 2018

I had a friend who lived at the corner of Sunnyside and Bacon.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:12 AM on October 4, 2018

> ps, To clear up a couple of things, I assume the residents will be largely hispanic bc of current demographics. By "Hispanic mythology" i meant the mythology from what are now Hispanic communities in the Americas, but really from any time period pre or post colonialism. "Mythology" is meant to be as widely interpreted as possible (i.e. to include actual historical figures as well as those that may or may not be real)

That comprises many, many different ethnicities and religions and languages and...I bet if you applied this logic to your own ethnic background you'll see how it could get weird?

If you want to reflect Hispanic/Latinx pride, go with artists, literary figures, prominent immigrants, etc. (And don't forget to include some non-white Latinos.)
posted by desuetude at 11:22 AM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I live in a development that has a fun naming theme. The streets are all made-up compound words that combine one horsey word with one mineral word. Bridlemine, Steelhorse, Ponymill, Leatherstone. It makes them unique and memorable, but easy to understand and spell.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:46 PM on October 4, 2018 [4 favorites]