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UK regional names for alleyways

Language Log·Mark Liberman·2 months ago
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Regional names for alleyways…

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— Clare Downham (@downham.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 4:51 AM


Wikipedia has a Street suffix page, which lists 208 street words "recommended by the U.S. Postal Service" and 55 "suffix forms suitable for use in Australia with clear connotations of the class and type of road, recommended by Standards Australia", along with shorter lists for the UK, Canada and Hong Kong. There are a fair number of these that denote alleyway-like passsages, beyond the list of regional variants pictured above by Clare Downham.

The "See also" section of that page informs us that odonymy is a fancy word for "the study of street names".

The development of so many words for types of paths and roadways is an interesting example of how lexical evolution works. No doubt there are analogous lists in other languages.

 

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