Most citizens are unaware of the names being proposed until the street signs are posted, but a rare objection to street names was voiced by the fire department in Greenville, Texas.
A development to be named Lafayette Square was proposed, with all of the street names taken from a French motif to suggest the elegance of the project. The fire chief complained that by the time a resident had repeated the pronunciation and spelling of Rambouillet Street in reporting a fire, the dwelling would be an ash heap before a fire truck could respond. The development proceeded as Lafayette Square, but the street names were simplified to French words easily recognized by Texans: Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Claudette, and La Fontaine.
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aus: Tarpley, Fred (1996): „Street names as signposts of world cultures“. In: Eichler, Ernst [u.a.] (Hrsg.): Namenforschung. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Onomastik. Bd. 2. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. (= Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (HSK). 11.2.) 1481-1499, hier: 1495.
