As I was driving through the light industrial area of Wangara recently looking for a paving stone business that I knew was located on Inspiration Drive, it occurredto me that I was crossing over a road called Innovation Circuit- I was truly at the point where Innovation meets Inspiration. This is a suburb that features Motivation Drive, Leadership Way, Action Place, Challenge Boulevard, Prosperity Avenue and Competition Loop. I'm not messing with you.
The odonym, or street name, is a curious factor in our daily lives that often goes unnoticed but provides frustrated creative planners an opportunity to let their minds wander, or in some cases, immortalise their children. I will grant you, there are only so many instances of Smith Street we could handle; indeed in Seattle there is an intersection between Pike Street and Pike Road. That'd be the intersection of Pike and Pike.
When I was younger, we lived on a street called Harbour View Parade. The concept of it being a 'parade' even though it was actually a gravel road at the time we lived there was not nearly as farcical as the fact that any 'harbour view' that may have been apparent would have required a cherry picker and a pretty powerful set of binoculars.
When my family first moved back to Perth after a long spell living in the country, we lived on a street aptly named 'The Return'. Many of the streets in Woodvale were so named; The Ramble, The Haven, The Ridge and The Crest. It probably seemed like a good idea to the town planners who came up with the concept, but you should try typing your street address in any of the online or electronic forms we encounter in our lives these days...and not enter 'street' or 'road' after it, and see what happens. We had mail addressed to 'The Return Rtn' and 'The Rtn' and anytime you try to order a pizza, some spotty-faced teenager would invariably ask with that completely disinterested tone that only a 17 year old can muster, "The Return…what…?".
I have also lived on two 'boulevards' in recent years. Putting a median strip down the middle of a single lane road with some deciduous trees in the middle does not turn a suburban street into a boulevard. This is overreaching. I've been to Sunset Boulevard in LA; Woodlake Boulevard is really not in the same league.
Of course, we're likely to get a lot of streets named after native plants and animals, founding fathers (and mothers), intrepid explorers and sometimes, as is the case with my current home, street names in some suburbs are 'themed', such as the Anglo-centric streets of Kingsley that I live amongst now or the not as 'high-class-as-they'd-hoped' wine varieites of The Vines.
It's important to note that just as Jackson Drive and Michaela Place are most likely named after someone's spoiled progeny, there are an increasing number of little girls being named after a street as well; Madison - an extremely popular name for little girls in the modern Western world - was not considered a female Christian name until Daryl Hannah's mermaid named herself after Madison Avenue in the Tom Hanks movie 'Splash'. That's right. Madison Avenue, from the mermaid movie.
