Abattoirs Road to Zinzan Street: Reading's streets and their names

What's in a Name?

We humans all have names, and almost everyone’s once meant something. Surnames can be derived from physical attributes (Redhead), place of origin (Scott), or occupation (Smith); dictionaries of forenames tell us that they usually originated with a hopeful suggestion of beauty, power or fame. But personal names hardly ever tell you anything about their current bearer: my own first and last refer to a messy combination of ‘red earth’ and ‘fermenting porridge’. ‘Adam’ was an unfashionable whim in 1943; ‘Sowan’ at least indicates a distant Scots ancestry.

There is, however, rather more in a name when it’s attached to a place. Standard reference works such as Ekwall’s Oxford Dicyionary of English Place-Names and Room’s Modern Place-Names in Great Britain and Ireland show that a great deal of history can be learnt from the names of villages, towns, cities and counties. When we focus down to street level, however, the sheer numbers of names mean that only a minority – including most of the older ones – have a meaningful local meaning. Over the last two centuries, those whose job it is to name new roads have often tried to think of something relevant to the locality; but in many urban areas, dozens of names have been needed in a hurry, hence the proliferation of arbitrary themed groups described in chapter 5.

The researcher should beware, however, of reading too much significance into a name he thinks he has explained: if Silver Street does derive from an old word for ‘sievemaker’, it doesn’t follow that the area was awash with this trade. There might have been only one, and not necessarily for any length of time: he just happened to be in business when someone decided that the street needed a name.

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