I mean I'm sure every country has stuff named after people, but it feels like it's done to the extreme here in the US. Seems like every city has a "Jefferson Street" and a "Washington Avenue". Every school I attended was named after a person. I mentioned in the megathread how my nice local park named after a flower got a name change after a pig got shot near it, so they named it after him.
Just seems like God forbid we have generic names for our roads, schools, parks, bridges, etc. Nope, gotta name it after someone. Even then, it's almost always either a politician, capitalist, or cop. Never like, a good teacher that people liked or otherwise good person except MLK Jr.
I think it's reflective of our hyper-individualized culture. And then there's how everything else that isn't named after a person is "Veterans Memorial", but that's a different discussion.
I was driving one time and there was some shitty overpass that had a sign "In memory of officer Pig Lee Wiggly, died in the line of duty."
Which was weird enough they dedicated some shitty overpass to him, but when I googled it he actually just died of a heart attack he wasn't like even shot or anything.
There's a lot of bridges named for cops who died in the line of autoerotic asphyxiation and other things unrelated to being a meter maid with a gun.
It was somewhere in the American south. I want to say Atlanta? But I can't remember exactly which one.
LMAO how much do your parents have to hate you to name you SHAFT HUNTER?!?
And why would you not change it?
At least your streets are just named after slavers and not literal nazi generals :shrug-outta-hecks: (though that is becoming rarer, slowly)
Oh yeah, they sometimes even have little signs, telling you how this one was one of the good ones, actually, because of some arbitrary reason. They are easy targets for some based vandalism tho :meow-anarchist:
years after i graduated and had moved away, the state road my high school was on (formerly just a number like "S.R. 420") was renamed to Ronald Reagan Avenue. whenever i come back to see family and see it, i'm just like :yea:
i am 99% certain he never came with 50 miles of the place, and the renaming happened like 20 years after his presidency.
I've noticed a lot of stuff getting named after Reagan in recent years. Definitely a power move on the part of reactionary boomers, and libs are all like "Reagan was the last good Republican" so they don't fight it...
In France, the high school I went to was named after a 19th century socialist writer and activist. It's usually quite broad, schools here could be named after kings, cardinals, presidents, scientists, poets... They don't even have to be French.
There's even a school group named after Karl Marx: https://patrimoines.iledefrance.fr/patrimoine/groupe-scolaire-karl-marx
here in Mexico many streets are named after Mexican politician and catholic idols
There's even a lot of things in Mexico City (which was once Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital of the city state alliance known in english as the Aztec empire) which are named after famous Mexica people like tlatoani Cuauhtémoc.
yep you are right, there are also names based on indigenous people too and famous mexicans like frida kahlo
Lots of anglo-corrupted words from indigenous tribes too. Everything from raccoons to Mississippi; settler colonialism at its finest.
Mississippi
after the Ojibwe word ᒥᓯ-ᓰᐱ misi-ziibi (English: Great river)
I had to look that up
I don't know what I hate more
The new cul de sac of cul de sacs they're building nearby that all have astrological signs for street names
Or the fact that all the roads nearby that have names like Gibbet Hill road, Nooseneck Lane and Catcher court
Astrological signs are kind of a good idea. Millennials gonna name the streets Pokémon characters
Okay but you can't name streets or parks after their function. "driving street" or "walking street" would be all they were called and there'd be a million of them.
tbh I'd like to make the opposite complaint, I think the american street naming system is needlessly depersonalized. In my country every street is named after a public figure and I think that makes it very easy to remember. Where I lived in the states like boston and la it felt very difficult to navigate without a GPS cuz streets were either numbered or have some dumbass name like "pine creek" or plymouth or something else just completely generic. Idk that's just how I feel
Av. Gral. San Martín esquina José de San Martín, cerca de Plaza del Libertador, barrio Granaderos, San Martín, Buenos Aires.
(Granaderos is strongly related with J San Martin, as well as many others things you'll see as names of squares, streets, towns, etc etc)
On the other hand there are streets in London named after penises for example cock lane
In Rio de Janeiro, the streets are named after generals from the dictatorship. Could be worse
How else would I be forcibly reminded of the Mythology of America if I don't have giant marble statues of the founding godkings or naming conventions paying homage to those godkings?
The Harold Holt Swim Centre is a complex of indoor and outdoor public swimming pools and facilities. It was built in 1969 on the site of the original Malvern Swimming Baths. The then Malvern City Council decided to name the Centre in memory of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt following his disappearance and presumed drowning at Portsea.
http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/places/result_detail/12051?print=true
Yep, right there. You already have a name for it, "Malvern Swim Centre".
