The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place
Edited by Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, Maoz Azaryahu
2018 Routledge
334 pages | 18 B/W Illus.
Streetscapes are part of the taken-for-granted spaces of everyday urban life, yet they are also contested arenas in which struggles over identity, memory, and place shape the social production of urban space. This book examines the role that street naming has played in the political life of urban streetscapes in both historical and contemporary cities. The renaming of streets and remaking of urban commemorative landscapes have long been key strategies that different political regimes have employed to legitimize spatial assertions of sovereign authority, ideological hegemony, and symbolic power. Over the past few decades, a rich body of critical scholarship has explored the politics of urban toponymy, and the present collection brings together the works of geographers, anthropologists, historians, linguists, planners, and political scientists to examine the power of street naming as an urban place-making practice. Covering a wide range of case studies from cities in Europe, North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, the contributions to this volume illustrate how the naming of streets has been instrumental to the reshaping of urban spatial imaginaries and the cultural politics of place.
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. 
Accent marks are missing in place names all over the Bay Area. Many neighborhoods and streets are named after Spanish explorers. Some of those names once had accent marks. But now, without them, we don’t know if we’re saying them right. 
Have you wondered how professional namers create those million dollar brand names? How those names are created, vetted, and selected? 
On April 25, China sent a letter to 36 foreign airlines pressuring them to remove references to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau as countries on their websites and marketing materials. Air Canada and Malaysia Airlines have altered references to Taiwan on their websites, indicating China’s claim over the self-ruled island; at Malaysia Arlines, where the country used to list “Taiwan,” it’s been changed to “Taiwan-China.” Air Canada’s booking page previously listed Taipei’s airport as being in “TW,” the abbreviation for Taiwan, but just recently all mention of Taiwan as the country had been replaced by “CN,” the abbreviation of China, with no mention of Taiwan.
It used to be the rule that children would take on their paternal surname – but no more. A range of options are on the rise, whether that be for children of heterosexual or same-sex couples.