

Somewhere in the Philippines, there are roads named after countries - greenbee
http://nicluo.com/somewhere-in-the-philippines-theres-roads-of-every-country-in-the-world/

======
techdragon
Ok... What's really suspicious is the alphabetically ordered clusters.

It's almost like someone just labeled a bunch of blank streets with a list of
nouns.

Any comparative maps of the area, preferably local ones produced inside the
Philippines, would help explain things a lot.

Edit 1: Digging into it further, reveals the area is pretty big... I've
rounded up the coordinates, exploring a little. 14.485, 121.023 is pretty much
the spot he was writing about in the blog, almost every street is strangely
named. But for quicker entry and sharing, 14.48, 121.02, is still squarely in
the middle of the area.

\---

The area is also the same on:

Bing Maps (
[http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=14.485000~121.025000&lvl=16...](http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=14.485000~121.025000&lvl=16&sty=r&q=%2014.485%2C%20121.025&form=LMLTCC)
) Nokia Here maps (
[http://here.com/14.4851019,121.0251471,17,0,0,normal.day](http://here.com/14.4851019,121.0251471,17,0,0,normal.day)
)

\---

From what I can tell the area these oddly named streets cover is rather
extensive. Several municipal regions have the same pattern. These municipal
areas show the pattern:

Bakoor City (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Bacoor+City,+Cavite,+Ph...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Bacoor+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

City of Las Piñas (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/City+of+Las+Piñas,+Metr...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/City+of+Las+Piñas,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines)
)

Parañaque (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Parañaque,+Metro+Manila...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Parañaque,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines)
)

Taguig (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Taguig,+Metro+Manila,+P...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Taguig,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines)
)

Muntinlupa (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Muntinlupa,+Metro+Manil...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Muntinlupa,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines)
)

City of San Pedro (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/City+of+San+Pedro,+Lagu...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/City+of+San+Pedro,+Laguna,+Philippines)
)

Dasmariñas City (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

\---

I could keep going but Dasmariñas City shows another interesting pattern, the
suburb names are pretty generic, such as:

BGY Zone I - B (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Bgy.+Zone+I+-+B,+Dasmar...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Bgy.+Zone+I+-+B,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Area 1 (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+1,+Dasmariñas+City...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+1,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Area 3 (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+3,+Dasmariñas+City...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+3,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Area B (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+B,+Dasmariñas+City...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+B,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Area C (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+C,+Dasmariñas+City...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+C,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Area G (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+G,+Dasmariñas+City...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+G,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Area K (
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+K,+Dasmariñas+City...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+K,+Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite,+Philippines)
)

Some interesting things like Area 2 and Area B not being present seem
conspicuous but not necessarily a pattern, these names are so generic its
entirely possible they represent some kind of placeholder policy.

\---

Edit 2:

Open Street Map shows the same names. Definitely looking deliberate, possibly
a historical quirk of some kind that i haven't been able to unearth through
Google translate and searching for Filipino phrases to do with road naming.

Further down [1] it was suggested that this is some kind of new development,
implying a property manager just named them all in a batch. Well, the fact
that the open street map data clearly shows "Chicago"[2] and "Atlanta"[3]
located in the very heart of Manilla's industrial port district. This makes it
rather hard to consider a 'new development' as an option.

Further, to this, Chicago shows up as the first discrepancy in these names
which may lead to some answers. The southern end of 'Chicago' doesn't match up
to what Google displays when you view this [4] area on Google maps. It shows
'Chicago' as "Delgado St", and the southern disconnected street is also called
"Delgado St" which in the OSM data shows up as "Antonio C. Delgado"[5].

From the look of it, some of these names may be attributable to mistakes, but
the underlying question of where these seemingly place holder names originate,
remains unanswered.

\---

Edit 3:

The seemingly weird names are widespread, subsections of the old section of
Manila, the Tondo district, are utterly awash with oddness, several dozen
marks consisting of just numbers, are evident here on this map level on google
maps [6]

Moving further away, I find "Sunshine"[7], and "2.91km"[8] in Quezon City.
2.91km also seems to give Google grief as the name seems to be incorrectly
handled on that street, with most of the north end labeled as "2.91km" and the
south end "Saint Martin" but when you zoom in, Google starts overlaying both
names and the north end isn't recognized as "2.91km" when you ask Google
what's at the location.

\---

Spreading the net wide over the whole country, the names from the northernmost
end, at Basco show a difference when viewed in OSM[9] vs Google maps[10].
Google displays the names with "St" added to most of them, all the roads are
marked the same on these maps, but on OSM, all the street names lack a suffix
indicating as such. Moving south, the names in Calayan on the island of
Cagayan seem to lack names on both OSM and Google Maps. Continuing south to
the main island, the town of Aparri shows the same pattern on Google[11] and
OSM[12] with OSM having no street suffixes.

\---

Jumping all the way south now, Digos City demonstrates this weirdness nice and
clearly. We find "Luna" in Google[13] and OSM[14] with Google not even having
the label. Moving around some more, we go to "Apple" in South Cotabato, on
Google[15] and OSM[16]. I could keep browsing but I've run out of time to keep
digging for now, at least I've ruled out 'local quirk' and found evidence the
pattern is evident across the entire Philippines.

Speculatively, if there was no native history of naming routes back before
Spanish and then later American rule, or the colonial governments simply
didn't care for the native names, its entirely possible that with thousands of
streets and roads lacking names or names they could pronounce, early colonial
governments merely went over the map and gave each of them one, the mindset of
"cant govern what you cant name" being present throughout history, government
wanting to be able to refer to places by name in various reports and meetings
effectively requiring them to find a way to give all these a name. However
this doesn't really cover what are clearly relatively modern urban roads, such
as "Chicago" and "Atlanta" found in the port district of Manila, which leaves
this theory with a few shortcomings.

\---

\--- 1 -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414256)

2 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/29170930](http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/29170930)

3 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/16176658](http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/16176658)

4 -
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Manila,+Metro+Manila,+Phil...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Manila,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines/@14.5896406,120.9673723,19z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x3397ca03571ec38b:0x69d1d5751069c11f?hl=en)

5 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/16176619](http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/16176619)

6 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/@14.6128113,120.9634945,15z?h...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/@14.6128113,120.9634945,15z?hl=en)

7 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Sunshine,+Quezon+City,+...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Sunshine,+Quezon+City,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines)

8 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/2.91KM,+Quezon+City,+Me...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/2.91KM,+Quezon+City,+Metro+Manila,+Philippines)

9 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/198496785](http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/198496785)

10 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Port+Rd,+Basco,+Batanes...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Port+Rd,+Basco,+Batanes,+Philippines)

11 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Aparri,+Cagayan,+Philip...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Aparri,+Cagayan,+Philippines/)

12 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/198505523](http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/198505523)

13 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/@6.7474661,125.3659606,18z?hl...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/@6.7474661,125.3659606,18z?hl=en)

14 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/97401719](http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/97401719)

15 -
[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Apple,+General+Santos,+...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Apple,+General+Santos,+South+Cotabato,+Philippines)

16 -
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/60237885](http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/60237885)

~~~
techdragon
Seems I broke something here, I cant actually edit this any more... is there
an edit limit I didn't know about? Kind of annoying I cant go back and fix any
format issues now.

~~~
DanBC
There is a time limit for editing.

Yep, is is sometimes a bit frustrating!

------
phektus
Filipino here. I used to live somewhat near that place, and we used to joke
about going to Germany or Australia when what we really mean is going to one
of those streets instead of the actual country. These are suburbs where the
real estate developer would follow a certain theme for the nomenclature of the
streets. We call these suburbs "villages". In my parent's village, the theme
are bird names, and our street is called Sand Piper Drive.

~~~
saryant
I think that's common with real estate developments everywhere. There's a
neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas where all the streets are named after
locations in Estonia:

[http://i.imgur.com/Z6u2IjI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Z6u2IjI.jpg)

------
mcv
This is not unusual. Streets need names, and people get increasingly creative.
I've lived on Saturn ("Saturnus", the name of an appartment building in
Duivendrecht, net Amsterdam), there's a street in the center of Amsterdam
called Rusland (Russia), there are towns in Netherland called "America" and
"Nederland". And then there's towns that have the same name (which is
particularly common in the US, I believe).

------
RUG3Y
It reminds me of some of the names they have on their Jeepneys.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepney](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepney)
When I was there, I saw Jeepneys called "Disneyland" and "McDonald's", etc.
Pretty random.

------
lmz
OSM has the same data.
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/14.4876/121.0193](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/14.4876/121.0193)

This is probably a new development, and they had to name the streets after
something.

~~~
techdragon
Definitely not 'a new development' See my next edit above.

~~~
lmz
New _real estate_ development. Not a new trend. This has been going on for a
while where I live too, themed clusters and that (not in the Philippines).

------
abderrahmane
In my city too, in my city too :D

[https://www.google.fr/maps/@34.0154491,-4.9881919,18z](https://www.google.fr/maps/@34.0154491,-4.9881919,18z)

------
aaaabbbb
There's a similar thing in Pittsburgh, where streets are named after locations
of battles in the Mexican War. I was a bit confused the first time I saw this.

~~~
cafard
And Pennsylvania stands out in having Indiana University of Pennsylvania and
California University of Pennsylvania in its state system.

------
gst
In San Francisco there's a neighborhood where streets are named after cities:
[http://goo.gl/l9slSp](http://goo.gl/l9slSp)

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kweks
I was just in Iraq (kurdistan) - and in Dahouk, they have the same.. it was
strange arriving in Iraq and driving down Australia road to turn into Montreal
street..

------
emocakes
They have the same thing in santiago del chile.

[https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Comercial+Sct+Germany+L...](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Comercial+Sct+Germany+Limitada/@-33.4403489,-70.7406054,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x9662c4273985e7e7:0x70ef1f1a51295789)

~~~
jewel
I remember that there was another neighborhood with streets named after
countries in Santiago, in La Cisterna. Also there is a street named "Central
America" that splits into two, one named "North America" and the other "South
America".

[https://goo.gl/maps/iDDiH](https://goo.gl/maps/iDDiH)

