Just back from France (Provence, wine, the air heady with the scent of lavender and thyme - very Jean de Florette) where I was once again struck by the French penchant for naming streets after individuals. In most French towns you will find places, cours, boulevards, rues and avenues named after Jean Jaures, Victor Hugo and Balzac. And in spite of their reputation, the French warmly embrace foreigners with Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Churchill all finding their way into French A to Zs. This desire to commemorate the lives and work of great politicians, poets and polyglots has even led to the renaming of metro stations hence stops in memory of Simon Bolivar, Raymond Queneau and Pierre & Marie Curie. The French are not alone in this, in South Africa there has been a huge amount of renaming in honour of the heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle (although if I were Albertina Sisulu I might be a tad annoyed that my contribution to the freedom of my nation was marked by the naming a highway after me). In Britain on the other hand we tend to shy away from this kind of adulation. Yes there may be a few Churchill Avenues and Mandela Places scattered about the country but in general we don't like naming things after people (except monarchs) and certainly would avoid renaming somewhere after someone however great. We don't go in for hero worship. So sadly we won't be seeing Oxford Street renamed Darwin Street (although anyone familiar with that thoroughfare knows it is an excellent spot to witness the survival of the fittest first hand), Jane Austen will not be immortalised as a square nor Charles Dickens as a train station - but check out Simon Patterson's the Great Bear to see how the tube map might look if we were prepared to be a bit more imaginative in how we acknowledge the accomplishments of the great and the good.
No comments:
Post a Comment