Signs of bad spelling abound

RALEIGH -- Pity the English teacher out for a drive, passing Raleigh street signs.

Russling Leaf Lane? That's Rustling.

Sherrif Place? That's Sheriff.

Chinquoteague Court? Misty lived in Chincoteague!

You can't even scribble corrections in red spray-paint. The city would just scrub them off.

About a dozen Raleigh street signs display words that are flat- out misspelled.

Developers and Realtors choose names for streets and submit them to the city for approval. Sometimes, Jim Allen of Prudential Carolinas Realty said, it takes four or five tries to get one that sticks.

The city, he said, is very concerned about avoiding duplications in Wake County -- but little else.

"You are absolutely at their mercy," he said.

Russling Leaf, he explained, was born after he, a developer and a builder brainstormed for something to match the trees in their new neighborhood off Leesville Road, the Oaks at Westlake.

"Rustling leaves," he said, "were for, you know, leaves falling off the trees in the fall."

But they couldn't get Rustling, Allen said. Another street already had it. So Russling would have to do.

The city, though, presented a more hands-off policy that gives developers more leeway.

"What we're checking for is phonetics," said Mike McDow, a city planning technician, "making sure it hasn't been used before. We're not really concerned with marketability. It hasn't really come up before, but we're not concerned with appropriateness."

That would explain some of Raleigh's more playful street names, such as Baldpate Court, Kangaroo Court and Random Place.

"There's some crazy names," said Elwood Davis, Raleigh's street superintendent. "What's that one, 'Woods Ream?' It was supposed to be Wood Stream."

Misspellings tend not to bother residents. It's a rare day when someone passes Amoretto Way and wonders, "Shouldn't that be Amaretto?"

Burrell Artiste leads a happy existence in a brand-new 3,300- square-foot home on Russling Leaf, and he never noticed the missing T and extra S.

"People like to spell things different ways," he said. "If whoever named it can't spell, that's on him."