Random Street Name Generator

How this random street name generator works

Press Generate and you get a street name. Turn up the Number box for several at once, no repeats. Copy takes them.

Each name is a specific word followed by a street type. Quarry Street. Sugarplum Lane. Lilypad Crescent.

The word for a street name, incidentally, is an odonym, and the study of them is odonymy. It is one of those disciplines that sounds invented until you notice how much it can tell you about a country.

The most common street in America is Second Street

The US Census Bureau counted street names and published the answer. The most common street name in the United States is Second, with 10,866 of them. Third comes next. First is behind both.

Read that again. There are roughly a thousand more Second Streets than First Streets.

The reason is beautifully mundane. When a town lays out a grid, the street it cares about is not called First. It is called Main, or, if the town grew along a river or a railway, Front. The numbering starts one block behind the important one.

The most-used name in American geography exists because the first thing was too important to be numbered.

Not everybody counts the same way. Rankings built from commercial address databases or from OpenStreetMap put Main Street on top, because they count how many towns have a Main Street rather than how many individual streets carry each name. Both answers are correct. They are answers to different questions, and which one you get depends entirely on what somebody chose to count.

Britain counts differently

Britain's answer is High Street, and it is not close. Ordnance Survey data puts it at roughly 5,410 across Britain, counting slight variants. Main Street follows with about 2,702.

A High Street is not a grid position. It is the commercial middle of a town, and the name is medieval. High meant chief, principal, the main one, long before it meant tall.

Where America numbered its streets outward from the important one, Britain simply pointed at the important one and said so.

Two countries, the same language, and their most common street name reveals how each one thinks a town should be laid out. One built a grid and counted. The other grew around a market and named the middle of it.

Street, Road, Lane, Close

The street type is the second half of an odonym, and English has an unreasonable number of them. They are not interchangeable, or at least they did not begin that way.

• A Street was paved. The word descends from the Latin strata, a laid road, which is why so many Roman roads in England are called Street something.
• A Road is a way for riding, and for centuries it meant the route between towns rather than anything inside one.
• A Lane was narrow.
• A Close is enclosed. In modern British estates it means a cul-de-sac, which is Norman French for the bottom of a bag.
• A Mews was where the horses lived, behind the houses.
• A Crescent curves. A Terrace is a row. A Parade was for walking along and being seen.
• A Boulevard is a rampart. The word comes through French from a Germanic word for a bulwark, and it named the promenade that replaced a city wall once the wall was pulled down.

Almost none of this survives in practice. Developers pick the word that sounds right. But the words still carry their old shapes, which is why Foxglove Close reads as a quiet suburban loop and Foxglove Boulevard reads as a joke.

Ways people actually use this

• Test data. The main use. The types vary in length from Row to Boulevard, which is exactly what a badly written field-width check will fall over on.
• Fiction and games. Give your town a Church Street and a Foxglove Place and it will feel inhabited.
• Mapping. Generate forty and lay them on a grid. Notice how quickly it starts to look like a real place.
• Address form testing. Try the numbered streets, the saints, the trees, and something with an apostrophe.
• Naming things that are not streets. It works alarmingly well for racehorses.

Getting more out of the filters

• Contains matches anywhere, so it filters by street type. Type Road, Boulevard, or Mews for the quiet ones.
• Type Second or Third to find the numbered streets, and read the section above for why the Firsts are outnumbered.
• Try a theme. The flowers, the birds, the trades, the seasons. They are all in there, and generating twenty at a time is the only way to see them.
• Starts with and Ends with compare a single character. Ends with e catches Lane, Close, Avenue, Place, Grove and Drive in one go.

Questions people ask

What is the most common street name in America?

By the Census Bureau's count of street instances, Second, with 10,866, ahead of Third and then First. Rankings that count how many towns have a street of a given name instead put Main first.

Why are there more Second Streets than First Streets?

Because many towns name their principal street Main, or Front if it runs along a river or railway, rather than First. The numbering then starts at Second.

What is the most common street name in Britain?

High Street, at roughly 5,410 including close variants, according to Ordnance Survey data. Main Street follows with about 2,702.

What is a street name called?

An odonym, sometimes hodonym. The study of them is odonymy, a branch of toponymy.

What is the difference between a street, a road and a lane?

Historically a street was paved, a road was the way between towns, and a lane was narrow. Modern naming ignores all three, but the words still carry the feeling of their original meanings.

References

1. Street name
2. The most common road name in Britain
3. The most common street names in the United States