Developers strive for Clever Way to Name Street

DURHAM -- For more than two decades, Vanessa Parker and her daughter, Vickie, have had to reference a 14th century poem just to get a pizza delivered.

That's the family's burden, living on Sir Gawain Way in South Durham.

"If you order anything over the phone, when it gets here, it's spelled wrong," Parker said. "Even if you spelled it for them, they get it wrong. We just laugh about it."

Sir Gawain was a knight in King Arthur's Court, immortalized in the alliterative romance "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Clearly, whoever developed Parker's Rollingwood neighborhood back in the 1980s was a fan of medieval literature.

For every new neighborhood built these days, there's a developer struggling to name its streets. Counties often prohibit duplication, where you cannot have, for example, a Pine Street and a Pine Lane. Each proposed name is vetted by officials with planning, public works and the local 911 call center. Developers say they'll submit 100 names for 25 streets, because most get rejected.

"It's very difficult to come up with new names," said Jim Anderson, director of Raleigh operations for Crosland, a builder of homes, apartments and retail centers. "There's a very low success rate."

Building in large counties such as Wake is particularly difficult, because a street name proposed for western Cary, for example, might already exist in Zebulon.

So developers create theme neighborhoods. Out in Knightdale, past meadows, horses, stables and barns, you'll come upon the Churchill community. It is modeled after Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, and streets are named for race winners such as Secretariat, Smarty Jones and Sunday Silence.

"We don't have a Seattle Slew," Anderson said, referencing the 1977 Triple Crown-winning thoroughbred. "It got killed because there was a Seattle Street [already]."

In Chatham County, Anderson's firm developed the upscale Governor's Club neighborhood, naming all its streets for former North Carolina governors. When Crosland extended the theme to the adjacent Governor's Lake community, it ran out of governors. Thus, some of those streets are named for the state's lieutenant governors. Where might it end? Legislators? Judges? State auditors and insurance commissioners?

In western Durham a few years back, developer Britt Spivey wanted the neighborhood he was designing to have a distinct Duke University feel. Its name, "Carillon Forest," refers to Duke Chapel and its carillon, the instrument that chimes within.

He tried to name each street for a former Duke president, but he only got the OK for Kilgo (Drive), Keohane (Drive) and Few (Circle).

This is where it gets esoteric. So Spivey named Katie Lane for his daughter and Corby Lane for the first girl he ever had a crush on. With three streets to go and a desire to continue the carillon theme, Spivey looked to the alma maters of three of his employees, who were graduates of Yale, Nebraska and Texas A&M.

The formal names of the carillons or bell towers at those three universities are Harkness, Henningson and Albritton. Today in the Carillon Forest subdivision, people live on Harkness Circle, Henningson Way and Albritton Drive.

"There's not much of a way to brand a neighborhood with your personal style or taste," Spivey said. "It's a small way."

Some developers strive for local significance.

"We try to make the street names be relevant to the history of the property in the area," said Roger Perry, the developer behind South Durham's Woodcroft community and Chapel Hill's Meadowmont. "In the absence of that, we pull them out of thin air."

Woodcroft is heavy on ridges: Fortunes Ridge, Sandstone Ridge, Winterberry Ridge. Also, nature in action: Running Brook, Falling Water, Fallen Oak. There's nothing locally significant there: Perry's company simply plucked the names from a community it built in Richmond, Va. The streets also exist in communities in Charlotte and Hilton Head, S.C.

Some developers see street names as a chance to leave a silent imprint or an inside joke. Strebor Street, off Guess Road in Durham, is simply "Roberts" spelled backward. It was built by Roberts Construction Co., said Steve Medlin, Durham's planning director.

Some names are clever, like Hemming Way, in Durham. Some appeal to the kid in us, like Raleigh's Pooh Corner Drive. And others just make you shake your head.

How would you like to live in Knightdale on Finally My Way?