{"id":499,"date":"2017-02-05T16:41:20","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T16:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulplowman.com\/blog\/?p=499"},"modified":"2023-02-05T23:12:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T23:12:18","slug":"town-and-street-name-nerdery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulplowman.com\/stuff\/town-and-street-name-nerdery\/","title":{"rendered":"Town And Street Name Nerdery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheUnless you happen to live in Shitterton<\/a>, or Twatt<\/a>, the chances are that you enjoy seeing funny place names.<\/p>\n

I wondered if there was an easy way of doing an online search for town and street names, so I could find funny ones. The popular mapping sites are great if you want to search for a specific name, but I was looking for somewhere you could do more general substring searches, or ideally regex searches.<\/p>\n

I didn’t really find what I was looking for, so I decided to make my own instead.<\/p>\n

So I got hold of street and place name data from the Ordnance Survey, but first I thought I’d do a bit of titting about with it to see what interesting things fell out.
\n<\/p>\n

[UPDATE]: If you want to see the street and place name search web-apps I created, click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

According to the OS, there are 41,652 named populated areas in the UK, with 783,351 named streets. Not all of these streets are in public places – some are inside places like power stations, and private estates.<\/p>\n

NOTE: I did find quite a few errors in the Ordnance Survey data, so none of the information in this post can be 100% guaranteed. Soz.<\/em><\/p>\n

First And Last<\/h2>\n

\"Zurich
\nThe place name which comes last alphabetically is Zouch<\/a> near Loughborough. The street name which comes last alphabetically is Zurich Gardens<\/a> near Stockport, Cheshire (note 1)<\/em><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for which place name comes first alphabetically, we run into a bit of a problem. There are quite a few places in Scotland with Gaelic names which start with an accented ‘\u00c0’, such as \u00c0ird a’ Mhulaidh<\/a>. Do these come before the ‘A’s? Or after? Or should they be treated the same? And then how do you treat spaces and punctuation marks? There’s an A’Chill<\/a> on the Scottish island of Canna, but there’s an Aaron’s Hill<\/a> in Godalming, Surrey. Which of these comes first?<\/p>\n

With road names, there are loads of names which begin with numerals (eg. “3rd Street”). Since we’re sorting alphabetically, 10th Avenue<\/a> in Hull, beats all the other numerical public streets.<\/p>\n

If we just look at non-numerical roads, then depending on how we deal with spaces and punctuation, the winner is either A’Becket Gardens<\/a>, A Court<\/a>, or Aachen Way<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"(Old)
\nThere is, however, only one public road in the whole of the UK which starts with a punctuation mark, and that’s (Old) Middlewich Road<\/a> in Sandbach, Cheshire.<\/p>\n

Name Length<\/h2>\n

The shortest UK place name is Ae<\/a> in Scotland, which you can’t actually search for on Streetmap because you have to enter at least three letters.<\/p>\n

The shortest road names in the UK are Rye<\/a> in Puriton, Somerset, Ash<\/a> in Swindon, Alt<\/a> in Widness, Cheshire, and Red<\/a> in Media City, Salford (although I think this is more of a ‘zone’ than a street).<\/p>\n

The longest place name in the UK is North Leverton with Habblesthorpe<\/a> in Nottinghamshire (note 2)<\/em><\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The longest street name is slightly difficult because all the leading candidates are problematic in some way. I’m going to straight away discount any names which have a sub-name in brackets, such as Alfred’s Way (East Ham And Barking By-Pass)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The next candidate is Queen Margaret’s Road Industrial Estate<\/a>, near Scarborough. This sounds like it’s the name of the estate itself, rather than the road running through it. But the name does appear on a street-name sign, so I’m going to tentatively say that this is the longest street name.<\/p>\n

The longest single-word place name is Penbontrhydyfothau<\/a><\/p>\n

The road names with the longest single words in them are Killingwoldgraves Lane<\/a>, and Pontrhydfendigaid Road<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vowels<\/h2>\n

The shortest road names which contain all the vowels are Suie Road<\/a> and Ugie Road<\/a>, both in Aberdeenshire.<\/p>\n

The shortest place name which contains all the vowels is Carnousie<\/a>, which is also in Aberdeenshire.<\/p>\n

There are 90 road names with all the vowels occurring only once in alphabetical order. They all end in either -Court (84) or -Mount (5), except for Water Mill Clough<\/a>. The shortest are: Averil Court<\/a> and Azelin Court<\/a>, and the longest is: Blakely Hill Court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are no place names with all the vowels occurring once in alphabetical order.<\/p>\n

There are 3 road names with all the vowels occurring once in reverse-alphabetical order. They are: Cupronickel Way<\/a>, Furrowfield Park<\/a>, and Upton Bridle Path<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are 2 places with all the vowels occurring once in reverse-alphabetical order. They are: Burton Pidsea<\/a> and Burton-in-Kendal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The longest place name with no vowels is Ysbyty Ystwyth<\/a> (it’s Welsh).<\/p>\n

The longest place name with no vowels or ‘Y’s is Cwmffrwd<\/a> (it’s also Welsh).<\/p>\n

The longest road name with no vowels is Stryd Bryn Hyfryd<\/a> (it might shock you but this is Welsh as well).<\/p>\n

The longest road name with no vowels or ‘Y’s is Cwrt Gwscwm<\/a> (guess where this is).<\/p>\n

The longest single-vowel place names are:<\/p>\n