Odonymy in the United Kingdom

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

History[]

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[]

Occasionally, some road names that were originally named in an innocuous way are nowadays considered rude.^[2]

Road numbering[]

List[]

London[]

Statistics[]

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

High Street
Station Road
Main Street
Park Road
Church Road
Church Street
London Road
Victoria Road
Green Lane
Manor Road
Church Lane
Park Avenue
The Avenue
The Crescent
Queens Road

References[]

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