David, a rideshare driver in Virginia Beach, Virginia, wonders about all the residential developments he sees with names containing the word quay. Usually pronounced KEE, quay is another term for “wharf.” The use of quay in these names may involve what Entrepreneur magazine dubbed newstalgia, or constructing something to feel old even though it’s actually new, or fauxstalgia, a yearning for a time in the past even though you never actually experienced it yourself. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Quay and Key Spelling and Pronunciation”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is David from Virginia Beach, Virginia. How are you?
Excellent, David. Thanks for calling.
Hi, David.
We moved down here as a family in 1991 from Buffalo,
And I retired from my previous employment last year.
I bought an economic car, and I’ve been driving Uber for almost a year now.
And I just noticed the last couple of months that some of the street names
That I began to drop passengers off and pick them up on were a little bit odd for me.
When I started, my GPS started to identify certain streets and parts of the area of Chesapeake,
Which is a little more upscale.
It would frequently say, you know, give, you know, like say instead of Thompson Street,
It would say Thompson Key.
And, of course, if you’re familiar with GPS, you know, they have a voice,
And I keep the voice up so the passenger can hear where we’re going.
But anyway, two or three times into it, I eventually paid attention to the actual sign.
And the sign, if it’s using that designation, it’ll say, like, Riverside, Q-U-A-Y.
And every time I ask a local resident, you know, what does that mean?
I haven’t met anybody that knows what Q-U-A-Y means.
And so I thought I’d give you guys a call.
So, David, yeah, the word spelled Q-U-A-Y is usually pronounced key.
It came into English in the 1300s, spelled K-E-Y, but then it was changed to the French spelling, which was Q-U-A-Y.
And it meant a kind of wharf or like a constructed bank or landing stage for ships.
So I’m not surprised that it’s in that area.
But I’m wondering if you’re driving to subdivisions and they have the name Key, Q-U-A-Y, if there’s a wharf in sight.
No, it’s just generally like, you know, boulevard, streets, square, you know, court, all those.
Yeah, it’s just it’s mixed in those.
There’s nothing physically designated.
It just it just gives that last, I guess you could say suffix or whatever, whatever designation you call it.
No, there’s nothing – I mean, I could be literally out in more of the rural areas where these new developments are, probably 25 miles from any waterway, and they still use that designation.
Well, it sounds like kind of aspirational naming, doesn’t it?
Yeah, there was an article in Entrepreneur Magazine earlier in 2019 that talked about new-stalgia and faux-stalgia, where we give places names and streets names in order to make them feel old or more authentic.
I wonder if it’s some of that.
That makes sense.
It is possible, however, that the key names for streets do continue an older tradition that is lost,
That there used to be a key or used to be a wharf, and it’s gone,
And the names just have continued long after the thing.
For example, I’m thinking of Canal Street in New York City.
There’s no canal, and it hasn’t been for a long time, but there was once a canal.
Wall Street in New York City, there’s no longer a wall, but there used to be a wall.
Okay.
And, you know, in some places they start a—I’ve seen in some of these seaside towns,
They’ll start a street coming off of a wharf, a key, or a jetty,
And they’ll just continue it straight off into the distance, and it keeps the name the whole way.
So I’m just wondering if there’s some of that happening, too.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it’s an odd one, but Q-U-A-Y is usually pronounced key.
So that’s cool.
Thank you, David, for your call.
We really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
Have a wonderful day.
Love your show.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
