I am not sure if this topic has been covered before, but in NZ/Aotearoa there is quite some debate about changing street names to reflect better our history (ie not focussing so much on the European names which often have colonial connotations. 
But my query is when were the first street names used and where? Did the Greeks/Romans/Ancient Egyptians/Incas/Chinese/Indians divide their places into streets and then given names?

As long as there have been cities and towns with streets there have been street names, it seems. Though the extent to which these became an official necessity mushroomed, I would imagine, with the introduction of postal delivery systems.

What is obvious if you go back through history however is that the streets most inclined to acquire a universally recognised name were traditionally and originally those in which some commercial activity, or other activity of communal importance, took place. What was not so universal however was exactly what name they might end up with - a landmark or prominent feature of the street that distinguished it from its neighbours was probably, to a largely illiterate population, the most important factor. It was only when civic authorities got involved that they started to acquire names associated with notable people or the like, and we have an extensive list of Roman streets, for example, mentioned in antiquity which certainly seemed to have gone by two names - one imposed by the authorities and one which people stubbornly persisted in using regardless. Vicus Caeseti, for example, a thoroughfare in Region XIII (mentioned by contemporary authors in association with the great fire in Nero's time), was obviously called after Caesetius Rufus whose villa stood nearby. However the civic guards also stationed there who signally failed to prevent the fire spreading identified it - along with the population - as Vicus Cloaccus (sewage street), it being where the run-off and effluent from the Palatine ran down through pipes to be collected by the Cloaccus Maximus where it ran near the forum. For strangers to Rome looking for directions this name would have made much more sense - the evidence of one's eyes and nose would have confirmed when one reached it.

I imagine similar occurred as long as people resided in conurbations of any size, including the desire for authorities to use street names as items of necessary discourse to publicise aspects to their particular agendas and thereby get them into public verbal currency. One that illustrates just how ancient this practise must have been is to be found in Thebes when, in the 3rd century BCE a local Nubian hotshot based in the city led a rebellion against Ptolemaic rule. He was defeated and Strabo recorded that the street in which his palace was situated, having for centuries been known as "Wisdom Street" (Thebes translates as the city of wisdom) was renamed by the Greeks to "dromos xazos" - Stupidity Street. No doubt the locals never used either name anyway - not much use if you're trying to find the nearest public toilet.

Hmm. Bit like the local pubs. The Waggon & Horses - always called "The Brick Bridge", "Round Oak" aka "Sparkies", "Glynne Arms" alias "Crooked House". The first and last now have signs bearing both the officiao name and the common appellation.

I have remembered there is a street in a small town near Queenstown in Aotearoa/New Zealand called Neplusultra Street. I have tried to find out why but with no success, at least not on Google or wikipedia. I don't have a history of Cromwell: that might tell me.

It's an interesting name for a street, right enough. The phrase "ne plus ultra" originally meant "nothing beyond this point", though by the time Europeans were arriving in NZ had also come to mean "beyond comparison" and was being used by manufacturers of many diverse products - from beer to depilatory creams - as an effective advertising motto from the 19th century onwards.

Since removal of women's body hair might not have been a huge priority for the town's original settlers I imagine the choice of that name might have been more likely inspired by either of the former usages. Maybe it was the last inhabited street beyond which was open land, or maybe someone working there was churning out some product much prized by the locals.

"Ne plus ultra" was a name used in the 18th and 19th centuries quite a lot in Ireland for hunting lodges, manses, and residences of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, especially if bordering moors or other large wild expanses in the west of the country, such as The Burren or Connemara. The slightly inaccurate description of an estimated three million people in pre-famine times inhabiting these same "wilds" as "nothing" didn't seem to deter those doing the christening of these "frontier" establishments.

Green George wrote:

Hmm. Bit like the local pubs. The Waggon & Horses - always called "The Brick Bridge", "Round Oak" aka "Sparkies", "Glynne Arms" alias "Crooked House". The first and last now have signs bearing both the officiao name and the common appellation.

Somewhere I read of the "Star and Garter" being known as the "Moon and Bloomers".

One local "Star and Garter" has now succumbed to local pressure. I#s been a jazz pub as long as I can remember, and was always known as "The Trumpet", and when (if?) it reopens, that's what it will be called.

There's an alley in my home village which also now has a name derived from its use down theages. It's called "Love Alley".

There's another (now former) alley with an interesting story - Of Alley, https://knowyourlondon.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/of-alley/


btw - if you are wondering "Why the Crooked House" - take a look https://thecrooked-house.co.uk/

Checking out where "ne plus ultra" has been used as a place name led me to an interesting story from Trinidad's colonial history. There, the name denotes an upland and former plantation in the west of the island near San Fernando, the largest town in the area.

In 1884 the locals were set to celebrate Hosay, a religious festival involving a procession from various starting points in the hinterland, ultimately converging on a church in San Fernando. Hosay, a very Trinidadian event still on the religious calendar in that country, is a very unique example of religious observance, celebrated at the time mostly by African and Hindi plantation workers, tenants, and "indentured servants" in which people dressed in their Sunday best, bearing "taziyas" (cardboard and tinsel representations of the tomb of Mohammed's grandson Hussein), singing African spirituals and Christian hymns, and ending up in the largest Catholic church in the district. If ever an event was designed to offend the sensibilities of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class in any of their colonies this one certainly ticked all the boxes.

On this occasion a newly appointed chief magistrate from London, Arthur Child, obviously decided enough was enough and elected to get tough with this Pagan-Hindi-Muslim-Catholic "rabble". Ahead of the event he drafted in British army and navy forces from around the surrounding colonies (the warship HMS Dido was summoned for the occasion) and assembled them outside San Fernando on the approach road from Ne Plus Ultra. Maybe the name appealed to him in the context of what he was doing - it was certainly apt on this occasion. As the festival-goers, numbered in their hundreds, came closer he read the Riot Act from horseback and immediately ordered the militia commander, Captain Baker, to open fire on the crowd. No "over the head" warning shots either - live rounds in repeated volleys into the front of the procession. The British report later numbered 22 Hindi dead and 120 wounded, the locals recorded a much higher tally, no doubt a more accurate assessment since the British seemed to have discounted the "Africans" as worth counting at all.

No inquiry was ever made into Child's or Baker's conduct. Child went on to become the island's Chief Justice and Baker was later military aide to the Governor. In fact no reference was ever made to the massacre again in official records or communications, even until very recently school history books ignored this most violent massacre in the island's colonial past. In 1885, the following year, Hosay was celebrated as usual, if a little more somberly one imagines. The British simply ignored it, and this peculiarly pan-religious celebration of a Muslim warlord killed in battle thousands of miles away and over a millennium earlier was allowed to carry on from that point onward as an annual event.

Ne Plus Ultra, indeed.

Couple of local street names which are descriptive.
"Tarry Hollow"
"Jenny Walkers Lane".
Jenny was a jenny (female ass) whose owner died. Periodically thereafter she left the patch of common land where she lived (fortunately untethered) to walk down to the farrier's place a mile away to have her feet trimmed. In time the route she took became a path, and was developed into a lane. Needless to say I don't believe a word of that.

Tonlegee Road in Dublin connects what was once monastic coastal property in Kilbarrack with the old Barony of Coolock further inland. These days both areas are sprawling suburbs of the city, the old connection road now just an unbroken chain of 1970s council and private terraced or semi-detached housing - with pebble-dash aplenty - seamlessly blending into both.

When I was younger however the road, like the old barony into which it meandered, sat amidst dairy farmland as far as the eye could see and, were one to glimpse through an infrequent gap between the thick blackberry and fuscia hedges interspersed with ancient elms that lined its distance on both sides, one would have seen a clue as to how it had acquired its name.

Tonlegee is simply the anglicised spelling of "tóin le gaoith", not so much descriptive of any feature of the landscape as of an activity within it. On one of those wet and windy days (they do exist in Ireland), and especially when the icy droplets are driven in horizontal shafts by gusts of an impudently capricious breeze whipping in from the nearby Irish Sea, you would then see the cows all standing to attention and dutifully adopting their signature stance after which the road was named - "arse to the wind".

Re nordman's tale of Hosay in Trinidad 1884 and colonial atrocity. There are errors. The point of it being a Shia observation for instance..... Hussein was grandson to the Prophet through his daughter  -the cause of schism into the two sects; Shias folllow the caliphate through the female line, Sunnis do not. Hussein and his followers - women, children and loyal warriors - including at least one Christian, died of thirst and starvation in the desert when besieged. This took 10 days and the events of this time are mourned in rites of sermon and prayer with a procession at the end. In the procession, tarzia's = heavy ornated models of  tombs are carried - there is competition in some area and groups in their presentation. There is usually at least one horse - the horses died too - and usuually one fine white one. The participants - not in their Sunday best at that time and coolies from India - may well have been down to a only a tied dhoti so that they could flail their backs in penance - often hooked/bladed thongs, knives and swords waved about and cuts inflicted  in rhythmic  ritual to trance like chants. During  the nights leading up to this there would also have been walking on burning embers. Rhythmic drum beats inducing the trances keep the slow show moving - with drinks  served all along the route. ... and there's  always a ' A Lorra blood'  about
In the sub continent, a Shia household is often identified by a tap in a gate pillar or a large pot of water.. Muslims went to Trinidad as coolies  and took their customs different sects of Shia' have chants and wailing noises. That along with the whipping, machete s and machete swinging to drum beat and well have been disconcerting - or got out of hand if sunni sect followers had barged in mayhem....... it still happens. Otherwise, peaceful Christians sometimes join in the mourning.
During colonial raj times, only keeping the peace... and keeping apart - happened. religious  rites went on in most regards with respect and non interference policy..... apart from widows being burned alive on funeral pyres - sutti - which was gradually stopped. ... for the most part.
However, someone inexperienced in all this - and it may well have got out of hand as it still does in parts, might  have panicked into urgent - and perhaps necessary action; agreed it was a heavy one.
The observation today in many places in Trindad is far more colourful with drum bands etcand  I  imagine the blood letting has stopped - I only know there is also a jazz style associated with the Hosay. The procession was first called by locals as The Coolie Carnival.
Real in depth research of this event worldwide might come up with the number of riots and deaths caused by intersect conflict during Moharram processions as a useful comparison.
British colonial past we know is dodgy but cherry picking events without indepth knowledge of local circumstances can be misleading. All my stuff above is not from research but experience, witness and general knowledge as told with some supposition of my own, of course.
Now I shall retire to my box behind the Elephant Room to await further  word here of the downfall of my benighted homeland - past present and of course sans EU, future. It is quite a mystery really but our area   has been corvid free per 100 000 population for days now - and there is food in the shops - still!

It was the British in Trinidad who classified the Asian indentured servant participants as "Hindi", not me. I included it as indicative of just how much tolerance and understanding the solicitor from London who had been sent to keep order in the colony actually possessed.

Oh, and Caro: Belated "Happy Moehanga Day"! I'm sure it was indeed a happy day for the Maoris when they "discovered" England.

I did not mention the Hindi wording - only about your writing Hussein as the Prophets son = thereby misunderstanding the important caliphate differences between Shia' and orthodox and often extreme anti feminist Sunnis ... CF Saudi Arabia followers who are an orthodox Sunni sect.
Fervant rivalry between the various sects often rears up seriously during Moharram rites. The coolies were surely a mixed bag of assorted Indian people.. And a good Ashura procession usually has a lot of blood and whipping and swords and throbbing drum beat and ritual wailing and chants and slogans etc - enough to alarm someone in charge not in the know and confuse anyone else not knowing the specifics. You seemed to have missed - or ducked- my point.

grandson is not what I recall seeing... and certainly not in a bold font. Surprising that you did not, therefore realise the foment between sect factions in a procession there most probably were..... as part of it - also reminding one of Orange order parades as being a somewhat provocative show of alignment.
It is also worth noting that the said man who ordered firing also became a colonial Justice on the Island... and the processions  obviously continued but with probably  more order - and to date also in independence - albeit greatly changed from the original rites.
Airing such stuff thus out of time depth and context reveals  a biased cut in grubby under linen.

Priscilla wrote:

It is also worth noting that the said man who ordered firing also became a colonial Justice on the Island...

A phenomenon we are not unfamiliar with in Irish colonial history too. (note how bold type can be added in a quote to draw attention to the salient point).

Caro: I see Britomart Place as a placename in Auckland, apparently the dockside area having been named after HMS Britomart, the ship itself named after some floozie who figured in the Arthurian legends. She was apparently a daughter of some Welsh king with a small role in the stories, but her name (apparently chosen for her by post-Norman conquest authors) was an intentional play on Britomartis, a Greek minor goddess associated with Crete, on which island her pedigree of course long predated Greek myth, stretching at least as far back as Minoan times.

I wonder how many Aucklandians assume it's because there's a mart nearby?

I do like "Britomart" - it has a thriving, get-ahead, entrepreneurial ring to it. Perhaps in our Brave New Post-Brexit world we could be called Great Britomart.

Our lovely, iconic passports, now restored to their former blue glory, could in future (instead of that nasty, imperial-sounding "Her Britannic Majesty...") state: 'Her Britomartic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely etc. etc."


Better than Poundland, any road up!

I don't think Aucklanders would be thinking of marts when they talk of Britomart. Mart is not really a word used in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We talk of street markets and supermarkets. I live a long way from Auckland but Britomart is often in the news, usually because of problems with buses and trains. I think they are in the process of being solved.

Apparently I emailed the Cromwell Museum re Neplusultra Street and they replied saying: 

"We understand that this street was named by the surveyor James McKay in 1865. The previous surveyor J. A. Connell, a Northern Irish man used names from North of Ireland. He had a falling out with some south Irish gold miners and to pay them back put ‘the curse of Ireland’ on to them by naming the town Cromwell! 

To balance things out McKay added names from South Ireland, and perhaps Neplusultra was his attempt at having the last word.
Hope that is of some interest."

With a name like McKay (I'm presupposing strong Scottish Presbyterian roots in his ancestral past) I would be more inclined to think that, rather than "balancing things out", he was simply continuing the Cromwellian theme - Oliver being despised in Ireland for, chief amongst those many other acts of pure villainy in that pantomime "hiss boo" style which was his particular contribution to posterity in that country, infamously banishing half the native population to the western wilds.

"To Hell or to Connaught" was the choice he gave them of which Hobson the innkeeper would have been proud, where "“There is not a tree to hang a man, water enough to drown a man, nor soil enough to bury a man”. The Shannon river, for those poor dispossessed sods, was their "Ne Plus Ultra" point.

nordmann wrote:

"To Hell or to Connaught" was the choice he gave them of which Hobson the innkeeper would have been proud, where “There is not a tree to hang a man, water enough to drown a man, nor soil enough to bury a man”.

Edmund Ludlow was specifically referring to the treeless, dry and very rocky, karst landscape of the Burren in County Clare, and though his comment continued, "... and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing", it is still a very apt description of the region. The bare, dry limestone pavements are starkly different from the lush, green pastures of Ireland's central lowlands, and Ludlow's brutal counter-guerrilla operations in the Burren were much aided by the desolate 'scorched-earth' nature of the land itself. The Burren has one of the highest annual rainfalls in Ireland - and that's saying something - yet because of the permeable limestone it has almost no surface water at all, as the rain immediately sinks underground through the fissures, joints, potholes and caves in the underlying rock. It is however a great place for speleology and while bleakly pittoresque on the surface it is perhaps even more spectacular underground.

nordmann wrote:

 

...he was simply continuing the Cromwellian theme - Oliver being despised in Ireland for, chief amongst those many other acts of pure villainy in that pantomime "hiss boo" style which was his particular contribution to posterity in that country, infamously banishing half the native population to the western wilds.

A quip attributed to the English comedienne, Jo Brand:

I like the Irish, but what I cannot understand is that when I say, "I'm from London" in a Dublin pub, this tends to be heard as, "I am Oliver Cromwell."

Jo must be drinking in some strange Dublin pubs. The denizens tend to know their Cromwell around those parts, and can certainly distinguish between London and Huntingdon, especially since his birthplace also gave rise to one of his more "endearing" nicknames in Ireland where only one letter required to be substituted to achieve a brief character sketch of the man in keeping with local sentiment.

Dublin actually contains a handful of sites in and around the old city called after the same gentleman. One of my favourites, off the beaten path and discovered by me only because I worked in the nearby locality for a while, is now alas no more (see Edit below) - a flight of steep stone steps connecting the high ridge overlooking Islandbridge to the ancient Viking mooring points on the Liffey, about two miles upstream from the city "proper". The steps took a very crooked route to minimise the gradient and were flanked on both sides in his day by high stone walls punctured by monastic type archways - at one time entrances to orchard and allotment properties.

When Cromwell first arrived in Ireland he made a priority of securing Dublin as a base but was unsure how much resistance he might face from the Corporation, the residents, and of course the Royalist/Catholic Federation militia who had used the city as a launchpad for their doomed military incursions into England. As it turned out he need not have worried - they were all spent forces in Dublin by the time he arrived - but to be on the safe side he transported his cavalry horses (nearly a thousand it was said) to various harbours around Wicklow, Wexford and Dublin's hinterlands with a view to approaching the city from all sides together. "Cromwell's Steps" offered a handy shortcut avoiding one of the gated approaches as well as perfect impromptu stabling and grazing possibilities in a very secure setting. He probably used the locale for only a few days but so impressive was the equine incursion that the locals, from that point onwards, forever associated the steps with the man.

The horses probably liked the area too (not being shot at while being well fed presumably appeals to them as much as to humans), certainly better than the cramped quarters he found for them once he'd successfully entered the city - the gloomy Long Hall and Chapel within the inner sanctum of Dublin Castle.

It's all expensive apartment blocks now.

Edit: In one of those all too rare occurrences related to property development in Dublin it seems, after a brief googling, that I was completely incorrect in my assumption that the steps were no more (based on a wander round the area a few years ago in which I had obviously lost my bearings amid all the new development). Apparently they have indeed survived and have even been given preservation status, not just because of Ollie but also because they figured in the Easter Rising in 1916 as a secure location used when the rebels commandeered nearby high buildings to take pot shots at any British coming in from the Curragh on the day.

"Cromwell's Quarters" is the official name according to the Corporation, though alternating with "Murdering Lane" in times past according to the street signage (the Murder Stream flows into the Camac River underground nearby though it's still a bloody brilliant name - literally - in keeping with the ambience of the place). Apparently the locals eschew both of these less than pleasant connotations anyway, referring to it when avoiding the "C" word as "The Forty Steps". Infuriatingly for literature and cinema lovers the actual count - I see reported on several blogs - is 39!

Oh, fascinating stuff, sir! Love the photo.

Murder Stream - reminds me of the sinister Hanging Ditch in the middle of Manchester. Haven't been up north for years, so presume it's still there.

Meles meles wrote:

Edmund Ludlow was specifically referring to the treeless, dry and very rocky, karst landscape of the Burren in County Clare, and though his comment continued, "... and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing", it is still a very apt description of the region. The bare, dry limestone pavements are starkly different from the lush, green pastures of Ireland's central lowlands,

The limestone also traps heat during the summer months which it then radiates out during the winter. This helps with the growing of the tufts of sweet, nourishing grass and also provides a warm environment for the cows and the cowherds. The Burren has the distinction of being one of the few places, if not the only place, on earth where cattle is actually taken up to the heights in the wintertime and then down to valleys in the summer.