Odonymy in France

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

Contents

History

Corner of rue de Turenne in the 3  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. Rue Turenne-Fontaine Boucherat-2.JPG
Corner of rue de Turenne in the 3  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'Eglise, Ensisheim. D'r Helbschta 640.jpg
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 FrenchRoad in EnglishOccurrences
1 Rue de l'Église Church Street 7,965
2Place de l'ÉgliseChurch Square5,755
3Grande Rue, Grand-RueGreat Street3,943
4Rue du MoulinMill Street3,566
5Place de la MairieTown Hall Square3,430
6Rue du ChâteauCastle Street2,963
7Rue des ÉcolesSchool Street2,779
8Rue de la GareStation Street2,771
9Rue de la MairieTown Hall Street2,672
10Rue PrincipaleMain Street2,452
11Rue du StadeStadium Street2,421
12Rue de la FontaineFountain Street2,346
13Rue PasteurPasteur Street2,020
14Rue des JardinsGarden Street1,755
15Rue Victor-HugoVictor Hugo Street1,621

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:[ original research? ]

Terms

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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