Next to the numbering and lettering of streets, a fashion apparently set up by Major Pierre-Charles L'Enfant's plans for Washington, the most noticeable feature of American street nomenclature, as opposed to that of England, is the extensive use of such designations as /avenue/, /boulevard/, /drive/ and /speedway/. /Avenue/ is used in England, but only rather sparingly; it is seldom applied to a mean street, or to one in a warehouse district. In America the word is scarcely distinguished in meaning from /street/.[51] /Boulevard/, /drive/ and /speedway/ are almost [Pg300] unknown to the English, but they use /road/ for urban thoroughfares, which is very seldom done in America, and they also make free use of /place/, /walk/, /passage/, /lane/ and /circus/, all of which are obsolescent on this side of the ocean. Some of the older American cities, such as Boston and Baltimore, have surviving certain ancient English designations of streets, /e. g./, /Cheapside/ and /Cornhill/; these are unknown in the newer American towns. /Broadway/, which is also English, is more common. Many American towns now have /plazas/, which are unknown in England. Nearly all have /City Hall parks/, /squares/ or /places/; /City Hall/ is also unknown over there. The principal street of a small town, in America, is almost always /Main street/; in England it is as invariably /High/ street, usually with the definite article before /High/. I have mentioned the corruption of old Dutch street and neighborhood names in New York. Spanish names are corrupted in the same way in the Southwest and French names in the Great Lakes region and in Louisiana. In New Orleans the street names, many of them strikingly beautiful, are pronounced so barbarously by the people that a Frenchman would have difficulty recognizing them. Thus, /Bourbon/ has become /Bur-bun/, /Dauphine/ is /Daw-fin/, /Foucher/ is /Foosh'r/, /Enghien/ is /En-gine/, and /Felicity/ (originally /Félicité/) is /Fill-a-city/. The French, in their days, bestowed the names of the Muses upon certain of the city streets. They are now pronounced /Cal´-y-ope/, /Terp´-si-chore/, /Mel-po-mean´/, /You-terp´/, and so on. /Bon Enfants/, apparently too difficult for the native, has been translated into /Good Children/. Only /Esplanade/ and /Bagatelle/, among the French street names of the city, seem to be commonly pronounced with any approach to correctness. FOOTNOTES: [1] The great Irish famine, which launched the chief emigration to America, extended from 1845 to 1847. The Know Nothing movement, which was chiefly aimed at the Irish, extended from 1852 to 1860. [2] A. B. Faust: The German Element in the United States, 2 vols.; Boston, 1909, vol. ii, pp. 34 /et seq./ [3] Richard T. Ely: Outlines of Economics, 3rd rev. ed.; New York, 1916, p. 68. [4] /Cf./ Seth K. Humphrey: Mankind; New York, 1917, p. 45. [5] /Cf./ William G. Searle: Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum; Cambridge, 1897. [6] /New York World/ Almanac, 1914, p. 668.