STREET NAMES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23179, 27 October 1938, Page 13

STREET NAMES

CITY COUNCIL'S LIST

LACK OF IMAGINATION SEARCH FOR LIKE SOUNDS MANY MEANINGLESS LABELS In protesting against the City Council's wish to alter the names of certain waterfront streets which were christened a number of years ago after famous men. the Auckland Harbour Board has opened the way to further criticism of the way in which the council has gone about its task of finding new names for more than 150 streets, in order to abolish duplications. As regards the waterfront streets, the council proposes .the following changes:—Haig to Hailsham, Halsey to Halsmere, Jellicoe to Drummoud, and AJlenby to Allenwood. The reason, apparently, is that there are minor streets with the same existing names in various suburbs controlled by other bodies, and, as the latter have failed to make alterations, the City Council fesls obliged to do so. A recent Auckland street list shows that the suburban bodies concerned are, or were, not very long ago, those of Mount Albert, Mount Roskill, Onehunga, Otahuhu, Devonport and Takapuna. Sound, Not Sense

Of the proposed new names, Hailsham is that of the present Lord Chancellor, and Drummond is no doubt a compliment to the late Commodore of the New Zealand Naval Division, but the other two, Allenwood and Halsmere, have no significance, and seem to have been chosen merely because they are rather similar to the names displaced. The same is true of the proposal to alter the title of Fergusson Street, near the Town Hall, which was named after a well-loved former Governor-General, to Fergus Street, another similar-sounding name with nothing in particular to commend it. The council seems to have made a habit in recent years of turning over the choice of street names to the city engineer's department, though it may be suggested that the Library Committee, which is supposed to keep the council's literary and artistic confidence, would have been better fitted to undertake the task, especially if it had sought aid from, say, the Auckland Historical Society and the Akarana Maori Association. > From a London List

As things are, the council has gone about the matter in a very unimaginative way. With all the resources of local and general history, biography, ancient and modern geography, classical and Nordic mythology, and the language and, lore of the Maori race at its disposal, it has admittedly been content to,go through the 1937 list of London streets and pick out . names resembling those to be displaced, and without any regard to meaning. Thus Brett Street becomes Brettenham Street; Church, Churchley; Exeter, Exfo*d; Fairfax, Fairford, and so on. When the list is examined, it appears that a majority of the names are those of small villages, hamlets and rivers in the British Isles, undiscoverable except by searching a large atlas or gazetteer. Others, such as Campdale and Gordondale, are possibly coinages. There are also more than 30 English surnames, as for example, Barton, Bullard, Edridge, Frean, Judd, Lindley, Macklin and Windrus. These may have belonged to worthies who lived somewhere near the London streets to which the names were applied, but in New Zealand the words have no meaning whatever. Puzzle at St. Hellers The catalogue certainly contains some geographical names that are wdll known —Glamis, Pitcairn. Corsica, Sheffield, Mersev, Vigo, Wiltshire and Clydesdale. Pindar and Virgil make a slight f gesture in the direction of" classical earning, Ruskin and Hallam commemorate figures in English literature, and Cobbett and Cromer recall a social reformer and a British pro-consul. All these, however, have been chosen for their resemblance to existing street names. . .. More than a few items on the list are really puzzling. The proposal to re-christen The Terrace, St. Heliers, as Terrapin Street suggests that someone in tne Town Hall has been airing a misplaced sense of humour. The terrapin is a small North American turtle that makes very good soup, but most people associate it with "Brer Tarrypin'' in the comic adventures of "Brer Rabbit," as related by Uncle Remus. Esparto, chosen for Esplanade Road, Avondale, is the name of a grass nsed >ior making paper. However, it would probably battle the keenest researcher to find any significance at all for Alberon, Nelgraae, Ondine, Sebert or Underne. Love of the Commonplace

It. is generally admitted, as someone wrote in the Herald six or seven years ago, that a racehorse may be named after anything at all, animate or inanimate, concrete or abstract. Ships and even houses admit some play of poetic or humorous fancy, but streets in a British community must not be named frivolously. A flavour of sentimental picturesqueness sometimes creeps in, but it is seldom allowed to go far. It is related that an early Otago surveyor who was fond of the classics named a number of rivers out of his knowledge of Greece and Rome. However, the hard-headed Scots on the Provincial Council would have none of these literary trimmings and rejected „them. The surveyor, in disgust, thereupon coined a series of pseudo-Scottish 'names ending in "burn"—Hogburn, Kyeburn, Sowburn, Manorbura, and so forth. These were accepted without demur and remain to the present day. Admittedly the Auckland City Council has not had an easy task in finding good new names for streets when so many obvious choices have been appropriated already, but there must be a few citizens at least who feel that it owes something more to culture and general knowledge than to perpetuate the same love ol the commonplace as the Otago story reveals.