Odonymy in France

This article deals with the conventions and uses of odonymy in France.

See also: Odonymy

History
Corner of rue de Turenne in the 3 th  district of Paris: the plaque mentions the current street name, while its former name - Street Boucherat - is still visible, carved in stone of the building.

It is possible to distinguish several eras where we observe a similar typology of street names on French territory:

Middle ages

At the end of the 13th century, with the expansion and population of cities like Paris, the need is felt to separate the houses from each other. The names respond at this time to a functional logic. The name of the road is that of the place it serves, this place being religious ("place de l'Eglise", "rue des Capucins") or civil ("place du marché", "rue des Bouchers", often names in reference to the trades which are grouped together in a street which takes the name or "houses where the sign hangs"), and so on.[1]

From 1600, on an idea of the Duke of Sully, the streets adopted names that had no direct connection with the designated place, while their name gradually became a public and royal monopoly: according to researcher Dominique Badariotti, the latter "is therefore exercised as best it can, functioning better in Paris than in the provinces and valuing the powerful of the kingdom or regional notables" [2]

Statistics
Rue de l'Église, Ensisheim.

Occurrences

In 2016 in France, the following 15 odonyms are the most frequently cited on street maps.[3]

Most common odonyms in France in 2009
# Road in French Road in English Occurrences
1 Rue de l'Église Church Street 7,965
2 Place de l'Église Church Square 5,755
3 Grande Rue Great Street 3,943
4 Rue du Moulin Mill Street 3,566
5 Place de la Mairie Town Hall Square 3,430
6 Rue du Château Castle Street 2,963
7 Rue des Écoles School Street 2,779
8 Rue de la Gare Station Street 2,771
9 Rue de la Mairie Town Hall Street 2,672
10 Rue Principale Main Street 2,452
11 Rue du Stade Stadium Street 2,421
12 Rue de la Fontaine Fountain Street 2,346
13 Rue Pasteur Pasteur Street 2,020
14 Rue des Jardins Garden Street 1,755
15 Rue Victor-Hugo Victor Hugo Street 1,621

Dates

Several odonyms recalling important dates in the history of France also approach or exceed a thousand occurrences, if we combine the types of roads and the spelling variants; among others:

Terms

References
  1. Jean-Pierre Leguay, Ouest France, 1984, p. 104.
  2. Badariotti, Dominique (2002). "Les noms de rue en géographie. Plaidoyer pour une recherche sur les odonymes / Street names, an argument for a geographic research". Annales de géographie. 111 (625): 285–302. doi:10.3406/geo.2002.1658.
  3. Garnier, Mathieu (12 April 2016). "Ces 200 personnalités sont les stars des rues françaises". Slate.fr (in French). Retrieved 26 March 2021.

See also
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.