
History of San Francisco Place Names - sethbannon
http://sfstreets.noahveltman.com/
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veltman
Hey guys, I made this map. Happy to answer any questions about how it was
done, I'm going to do a detailed writeup when I have a chance. The short
version is: no Wikipedia link-up, it's all manual research from archives,
books, and sites (including Wikipedia). There are lots of Wikipedia links
included but that's just for people who want more detail than I included in
the descriptions. I parsed the street/polygon geometry from OSM and tied it
together with Leaflet and then added lots of nitpicky extra design choices in
JS.

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ebiester
It's great! Any chance you could overlay the neighborhoods and their name
origins?

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jcr
It would be fun, but really tough, and occasionally impossible.

Not all of the origins of the names of neighborhoods are known. The one I've
always wondered about was the "Tender Loin"/"Tenderloin" district of SF. There
are a lot of anecdotes about the origin of this name [1] but no one has a
definitive answer.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco>

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jcl
Very nice. I've been curious about the origin of Gough Street and was quite
amused by the explanation:

 _Charles H. Gough - A local milkman who served on the 1855 committee tasked
with naming the streets of the Western Addition. He named Gough Street after
himself and Octavia Street after his sister, and may have named Steiner Street
after a friend._

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supersillyus
According to Last Call by Daniel Okrent, Gough St was named after famed
temperance orator John Bartholomew Gough. I'd assumed that was true until I
saw this site. Wikipedia has support for both theories, but it looks like
Charles H was the real namesake.

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prawn
Been planning on making an app that does this based on current location. The
government in South Australia lists source information like this along with
almost every named street, suburb, etc. Should be standard worldwide IMO.

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asveikau
One item of curiosity: We all know who recognizable figures such as Lincoln,
John F. Kennedy, and MLK Jr. are. When did they decide to name streets after
them?

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veltman
Been planning to add this, dates for when the street got its current name
(when available). Coming soon!

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martinoma
This is awesome. It would be cool to see neighborhood names, too, when they
aren't linked directly to a street

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veltman
Yeah, there are lots of categories like neighborhood names that have their own
interesting stories but I wasn't sure how to display. Definitely lots of room
for improvement, there are also plenty of gaps in the streets, I'll hopefully
be able to fill some of those in in the coming weeks.

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jesusabdullah
Equal representation for O-Town!! What's the history of T-graph? Peralta? San
Parblo? I bet MLK (nee Grove) has some interesting history.

(I assume T-graph followed a telegraph route between Oakland and Berkeley. I
more or less know where West MacArf got its name.)

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enf
MacArthur is for General Douglas MacArthur. It was cobbled together from a
bunch of existing streets to provide a through route to the Bay Bridge when
the bridge was new.

San Pablo is the road to the town of San Pablo.

Peralta is from Don Luís María Peralta, owner of Rancho San Antonio.

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brini
Thanks for this. I've heard that some of the alleys south of Market got their
names from the proprietors of brothels in that area, such as Minna, Natoma,
Tehama, Clementina. Can anyone debunk/confirm this?

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stormbrew
I've always wondered if Howard Beale in the film Network was named after the
intersection of those streets in SF. Alas, this does not answer that question.

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smoyer
Bookmarked! I'm going to use this when I'm cruising around the city next time
(perhaps OracleWorld/JavaOne).

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veltman
FYI, if you view it on your phone, you should be able to use the link in the
lower-right corner to zoom to your current location!

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PaulHoule
Sweet! How did you reconcile Wikipedia concepts with the line geography of
streets?

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maxerickson
It looks like it was a manual process:

<https://twitter.com/veltman/status/328613691392143360>

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saltzman
dude this kicks so much ass.

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chadlpowell
super cool!

