Unlike place names, which often give us information who once lived somewhere, street names can be a different case entirely. Sometimes they bear the names of notable (and often now infamous) people.
Other times they refer to long-gone industries performed in the area – you can guess what happened on Cock Lane in London, site of the Cock Lane Poltergeist in 1762.
Or street names might be the last remains of a now-dead language. Yet the continual building of new streets also sees the creation of new names more fitting to the time. Newcastle upon Tyne’s Great Park development features a Sir Bobby Robson Way.
Given the different ways these street names can come about, let’s explore the origins of some unusual street names in the UK and US.
Two Ball Lonnen, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
This name might sound odd but it actually ends up with a very straightforward explanation. It connects the A167 and A186 in the Fenham area, and despite its length of 1.47 km, Lonnen means ‘Lane’ in the Geordie dialect.
A photo from the entrance to the lane at the West Road end shows a stone ball atop each of the two stone gate posts. The photo was taken in around 1905, and the two balls are long gone, having been taken to Whitfield Hall near Allendale.
So the street name is actually a perfect example of the somewhat literal approach we take to street names!
Dog Leap Stairs, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
This narrow staircase connects the Castle Garth area beside Newcastle Castle and its Black Gate with The Side, leading to the Quayside.
Despite the name, it has nothing to do with jumping dogs. It actually derives from ‘Dog Loup’, meaning ‘a narrow slip of ground between houses’ (Sitelines n.d.).
According to legend, when Baron Eldon, later Lord Chancellor of England, eloped with Bessie Surtees in 1772, he supposedly rode away with her on horseback up Dog Leap Stairs.
It’s also name-checked in the Dire Straits song ‘Down to the Waterline’ from 1978.
There is also a Dog Bank in Newcastle, which originally linked Pilgrim Street and Akenside Hill. Here, the word ‘dog’ is likely to refer to a ‘dog-leg’, meaning a sharp bend or narrow passage (Newcastle upon Tyne City Libraries & Arts).
St Mary’s Axe, London, England
I’ve always been fascinated by the street name, St Mary’s Axe. If you’ve never heard of it, you’ll almost certainly have heard of one of its most famous buildings – the Gherkin, otherwise known as 30 St Mary Axe.
So where did the name come from? There was a church with the same name on the west side of St Mary’s Axe Street, although it was demolished in 1565. According to John Stow, the church’s full name was S. Marie the virgine, Saint Vrsula, and the 11000. Virgins. Yet people used its common name because there was a nearby sign featuring an axe (1908 [1603]). Given many signs featured images rather than words, it’s difficult to know what business the sign was for.
Henry Harben offers a different explanation. Yes, the church was dedicated to the 11,000 martyred virgins massacred by Huns on a journey with St. Ursula. But it apparently also contained one of the three axes used to execute them. This explanation came from a document written in 1514 (1918).
Little Britain, London, England
Another name that’s always fascinated me is Little Britain, just south of Smithfield. Its original name was Little Brittany, since people from Brittany, France, settled here following the Norman Conquest. Among others, the area was favoured by the Dukes of Brittany.
Over time, as London grew, the wealthy moved west, and various trades moved into the vacated buildings. In Little Britain’s case, it became home to booksellers, although they abandoned it in favour of Paternoster Row and St Paul’s Churchyard.
Many of the former mansions were subdivided into tenements. John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Washington Irving, and Benjamin Franklin all stayed in the street at some point (exploringlondon 2016).
Crotch Crescent, Oxford, England
Crotch Crescent sounds like one of those typically smutty street names. Yet unlike a raft of other names, like London’s Sherburn Lane, Crotch Crescent actually has a pretty mundane explanation.
It takes its name from William Crotch, an 18th-century music professor at Oxford.
The word ‘crotch’ could also potentially come from the Middle English word ‘croche’, which can mean either a crook, or a cross. The word first appeared in 1539 to refer to a forked stick.
Ghost House Lane, Chilwell, Nottingham, England
Surprisingly, given the huge fascination with all things paranormal, there is only one Ghost House Lane in the world. As someone deeply interested in the supernatural, I had to investigate further.
The ghost house of the street name fell to demolition in 1952 during redevelopment in the area. But the legend associated with it goes back to 1827.
At the time, Chilwell was a farming village. A pedlar told a customer he’d be staying at a farmhouse in the village. It seems the pedlar wanted to marry one of the three daughters of the Bagguley family who lived in the farmhouse, suggesting he must have been relatively well-off.
The pedlar, sometimes named as McQuince, left his penultimate customer to head to Ash Flat House, and he was never seen again. His customers in Chilwell and Beeston owed him money but no one ever came to collect it.
A year later, the Bagguley family who lived in Ash Flat House seemed much more wealthy. The house boasted new furniture, the family’s three daughters wore nicer clothes, and they’d bought pigs. Ten years after McQuince’s disappearance, their landlord kicked the Bagguley family out of Ash Flat House.
That winter, the Chilwell Ghost legend began in earnest. People could hear bangs at night, as though someone threw something at the shutters. The house shook but no one who kept watch could see why. Some suggested it was the ghost of McQuince, though his body has never been found (Fair 2022).
The Philog, Cardiff, Wales
While there can be a tendency in articles like this to look for innuendo or funny names, it’s also important to examine the just plain baffling. The Philog, which leads into Whitchurch Common in Cardiff, is one such name. The name originally applied to an old thatched house on the street, though that doesn’t get us into what it actually means (Matthews 1905).
Reem Ahmed notes that the ‘ph’ is the anglicised version of ‘ff’ in Welsh. Following that, The Philog might be an anglicised version of ‘ffilog’, an old Welsh word which can mean “a young mare/filly” or “a wing or spoke of a wheel” (2022). From that, we might deduce that the old thatched house had a stable. Perhaps they owned a single filly.
Even better for our purposes, Edgar L. Chappell suggested in his book Old Whitchurch: The Story of a Glamorgan Parish that the name related to Ceffyl Dŵr, the Welsh water horse. In various folk tales, they’re similar to the Scottish kelpie or Irish each uisge. They loiter by waterfalls and pools, and when a human decided to ride one, they might fly into the sky where they evaporate, their rider plummeting to their death. In some legends, the only people who can ride them safely are clergymen.
According to Chappell, Ceffyl Dŵr once loitered by the Taff near Whitchurch Common (Ahmed 2022).
Goosedubbs, Glasgow, Scotland
You’ll find Goosedubbs in the city centre, which is all that remains of an 18th century lane. A mansion once stood in this area, home to the Provost of Glasgow, John Aird, in the early 1700s. Aird kept geese who enjoyed splashing about in the puddles in the nearby lane. As puddles were known as dubbs, so the lane became Goosedubbs (BBC 2024).
Candy Cane Lane, Santa Claus, Indiana, USA
Last week, we looked at the town of Santa Claus, Indiana, and it turns out that they also have some pretty interesting street names. There’s a Good Friday Boulevard, a Valentine Day Drive, and even an Ides of March Drive.
But they also have a host of Christmas-themed street names, including E Candy Cane Lane, Mistletoe Drive, and Sleigh Bell Drive. There’s even a nod to the Three Kings with Balthazar Drive, Kasper Drive, and Melchior Drive.
Bucket of Blood Street, Holbrook, Arizona, USA
According to legend, the street got its name following a gunfight in Terrill’s Cottage Saloon in the 1880s. It seems it started because of either a card game that went wrong or an argument between rival cowboy gangs (msapocalypse 2015). The gunfight got so violent that passersby described the saloon as looking as though someone threw a bucket of blood inside (Fox, quoted in Cahn 2025).
Another version of events explained that the saloon was renamed in 1891 following a double murder.
Terrill’s renamed itself the Bucket of Blood Saloon to capitalise on the story. While the saloon is long gone, the street name remains (Ferro and Conradt 2015).
Chicken Dinner Road, Caldwell, Idaho, USA
According to legend, Morris and Laura Lamb were friends with former Idaho governor C. Ben Ross in the 1930s. One day while Ross was still governor, Laura invited him and his wife Edna for dinner at her house on Lane 12. It seems she was famous for her fried chicken.
Over dinner, she brought up the sorry state of Lane 12 to Ross. He made her a deal; if she got it graded and graveled, he’d get it oiled. Laura upheld her end of the bargain, so Ross upheld his. Someone in the neighbourhood was apparently less impressed, and painted ‘Lamb’s Chicken Dinner Avenue’ along the new road surface. The name stuck (Cahn 2025).
Liquid Laughter Lane, Columbia, Maryland, USA
Columbia has a range of weird street names, yet the reasoning behind them is actually sound. The town’s developer made a deal with the post office not to reuse street names from Baltimore City, Baltimore County or Anne Arundel County.
The only problem was they now needed to find a thousand brand new names for streets in a short period of time. Thus the town boasts streets like Liquid Laughter Lane, Crazy Quilt Court and Painted Yellow Gate (Cahn 2025).
What strange street names are in your neighbourhood?
I would love to hear if you’ve heard similar stories about the street names where you are. It would be interesting to see what names appear and what folklore has become attached to them! Feel free to leave a comment below if you’ve got any strange street names in your neck of the woods.
References
Ahmed, Reem (2022), ‘The stories behind the most curious street names in Cardiff’, WalesOnline, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/cardiff-street-names-meaning-womamby-22045939. Accessed 2 March 2025.
BBC (2024), ‘The unusual street names that turn peoples’ heads’, BBC Bitesize, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zw4fdnb. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Cahn, Lauren (2025), ‘The Funniest Street Names in Every State’, Reader’s Digest, https://www.rd.com/list/funniest-street-names/. Accessed 2 March 2025.
exploringlondon (2016), ‘What’s in a name?…Little Britain…’, Exploring London, https://exploring-london.com/2016/08/22/whats-in-a-name-little-britain/. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Fair, Thomas (2022), ‘The mystery of Chilwell’s Ghost House Lane and an unsolved disappearance’, NottinghamLive, https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/history/mystery-chilwells-ghost-house-lane-7513112. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Ferro, Shaunacy and Stacy Conradt (2015), ’41 of the Weirdest Street Names Across the U.S.’, Mental Floss, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66000/15-weirdest-street-names-across-us. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Harben, Henry A. (1918) ‘Mary (St.) at Hill – Mary (St.) de Cricherche, Chapel”‘, A Dictionary of London, London: H Jenkins, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/dictionary-of-london/mary-at-hill-mary-de-cricherche-chapel. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Matthews, John Hobson (ed) (1905), ‘Schedule of place names: N – R’, Cardiff Records: Volume 5, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cardiff-records/vol5/pp394-413. Accessed 2 March 2025.
msapocalypse (2015), ‘Bucket of Blood Street’, Atlas Obscura, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bucket-of-blood-street. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Newcastle upon Tyne City Libraries & Arts (1992), What’s In a Name…? Some Newcastle street names explained, Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle upon Tyne City Libraries & Arts.
Sitelines (no date), ‘The Side, Dog Leap Stairs’, Sitelines, https://sitelines.newcastle.gov.uk/SMR/9916. Accessed 2 March 2025.
Stow, John (1908 [1603]) ‘Limestreete warde’, A Survey of London. Reprinted From the Text of 1603. Oxford: Clarendon. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/survey-of-london-stow/1603/pp150-163. Accessed 2 March 2025.
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I now live and work in the Stockport area and there’s a place called Dodge Hill and the family (the Dodge’s) left to go to the US and made – Dodge City. It’s not odd names but a great area tale.
Quite a few years ago I used to live on Two Ball Lonnen. An old lady living nearby used to say that during the war a bomb dropped, and the two balls dropped off their posts and rolled all the way down the street. We used to take this story with a bit of a pinch of salt, but I never knew where the balls ended up – but now I do! Thanks.
There’s a Betty Haunt Lane on the Isle of Wight. According to local legend, while the pub was the haunt of smugglers, the barmaid was a smuggler’s daughter, known as Betty. In the 18th century, excise men were stationed in Admiralty cottages not far from the inn. Whenever contraband was expected to pass along Middle Road, she was tasked with being amorous and available to the customs officers.
To her great misfortune, Betty fell in love with one of the excise men. She then proceeded to betray her colleagues to the officers. Those who escaped justice were said to have murdered her excise officer lover. Shortly after, she was strangled in what is now known as Betty Haunt Lane.