What’s the difference between a street, a road, an avenue, a boulevard, etc? There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to how the names of public ways are suffixed. Does it depend on width, length, importance, or (more likely) the builder’s whim? Please advise.
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Whatever scarcities we may have in this world, a shortage of street-name suffixes isn’t one of them. The possibilities include but are not limited to alley, avenue, boulevard, circle, court, cove, crescent, crossing, dale, drive, estate, extension, gardens, gate, heights, highway, lake, landing, lane, loop, park, parkway, path, place, plaza, point, promenade, ridge, road, roadway, square, street, terrace, trace, trail, village, or way, to say nothing of commonly used foreign words such as camino, calle, etc.
Confronted with this plethora of terms, you’ll probably have one of the following reactions:
Cul-de-sacs should be named circle, court, way, or place.
North-south streets–street; east-west–avenue. (Take that, Manhattan.)
Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, is even more precise:
Begins and ends at same thoroughfare–loop.
