'Streetonomics': What our addresses say about us - BBC Future

One day, the writer and lawyer Deirdre Mask was lost somewhere in West Virginia. She had borrowed her father's car to drive to the home of an acquaintance, equipped with complicated directions. What made it particularly difficult was that the man she intended to visit had no address. His street lacked a name, and his house had no number.

As Mask would discover, many residents in that West Virginia county were in a similar situation. They'd pick up their mail at the post office. And if directions were required, they'd talk of landmarks instead: turn at the stone church, go past the factory, left at the drive-in restaurant, and so on.

So over many years, West Virginia has been making a state-wide effort to name its unmarked roads. Often the titles have been chosen by officials: reflecting local history, for instance. But as Mask discovered, in a few places residents have proposed eclectic titles such as Booger Hollow, Crunchy Granola Lane or even Stupid Way. Some have been happy to take on names, but many have not, feeling they reflect a form of governmental oversight they don't want or need. (The resident who suggested Stupid Way did so "because this whole street name stuff is stupid".)

Stories like West Virginia's inspired Mask to take a closer look at street names all over the world. How and why have people chosen the ones they have? It's easy to take for granted that roads have titles, but look a little closer and they can reveal a great deal about the nature and character of a place, as well as its history. "We think of street addresses as purely functional and administrative tools, but they tell a grander narrative of how power has shifted and stretched over the centuries," she writes in The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.

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